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 Quite simply put, the swim is where the real difference lies between the amateurs and elite triathletes.

Is that really true? Does it really matter? What can I learn from competitive swimmers to improve my swim? Below is an attempt to answer these three questions.

Evidence that Age Groupers (AGers) need to focus more on the swim leg

Take the 2009 Windsor triathlon as an example. I chose this race as the course used by the elites and the AGers is the same.

Below I’ve taken the median times for the swim, bike and run legs of the top 15 finishers in the elite and AG races.

                                                 Swim:              Bike:               Run: 

Elites:                                     20:00            59:07            35:52                       

AGers:                                    22:37          1:03:53           38:26

Absolute time diff.            2:37                4:46               2:34

%age time difference.       13.1%               8.1%            7.2%

Immediately it’s clear that, in the swim leg is where AGers are relatively much weaker compared to elite racers. But there are various problems here - it is an easier elite field to enter (i.e. entries from excellent/v.good AGers, as well as elite athletes); you can’t draft in UK AG races, affecting the bike split, amongst other reasons.

So let’s have a look at another result, this time the Mazda London race, again where the course is the same for AGers and elite athletes. Here I’ve taken the first 25 finishers (as they’re much bigger fields).

Mazda London 2009:

                                                 Swim:              Bike:               Run: 

Elites:                                     18:54             56:26            29:49                       

AGers:                                   25:11            1:03:50          35:12

Absolute time diff.            6:27                7:24               5:23

%age time difference.       32.7%           13.1%            18.0%

Firstly, due to the quality of the field, the percentages have blown out relative to the Windsor results. Secondly, and more importantly, it is even clearer in this example that the swim is by far where the greatest percentage difference lies between the AGers and the elite racers. As is what more normally occurs – the Windsor example an exception – the run then comes next, with the smallest percentage difference in the bike leg. In the case of legal draft racing, this percentage would become smaller.

Having filtered through other results too, the general observation is that, in descending order, the percentage difference between AGers and elite racers goes: swim, run, bike. Comparisons could be made and debates opened up, but for the sake of excess verbiage I’ll leave it here.

The philosophy – or justification - behind the status-quo, and reasons for change

Back to the first sentence of the article, and now armed with evidence, of the 3 disciplines swimming is the weakest of AGers on a relative basis. Probably not ground-breaking news for many triathletes that.

Surely then, much can be gained from adjusting training regimes to improve that discipline? As Joe Friel details in his ‘Triathlete’s Training Bible’, you’ve identified a limiter, and thus can actively focus on it in your training.

“Why should I do that? It’s the shortest event so I’ll shave more time off my overall split by hitting the bike or run sessions harder, and, anyway, in non-drafting AG racing the swim-leg relevancy is limited.”

It’s a voice worth listening to. In absolute terms, the bike time difference is larger than the swim or run differences (exaggerated given the illegality of drafting on the bike in AG races. Thinking about it another way, the percentage difference to pros would become even smaller, drafting permitted, thus the multiple even larger compared to the swim percentage difference.) It’s not hard to see why, then, that looking at absolute numbers it would appear beneficial to train harder on the bike leg which has a greater absolute difference, or the run leg which isn’t too different in absolute terms from the swim-leg time difference.

That argument is surely flawed though; it is estimating ones potential abilities as being almost on a par with the pro athletes – “With a bit more training that time will come down even further”. You’d be accused of being a fantasist if you expected to become almost as good (i.e. tend the percentage difference to zero) as Alberto Contador if you biked more, Haile Gabreselassie if you ran more, or Michael Phelps if you swam more. So why is it different now the sports are combined? Maybe you’re a rough diamond yet to discover your true worth, but what’s more likely is that you reduce the higher percentage differences much faster as you improve your competence and physical condition in those disciplines.

On the other hand, maybe:

i) you’ve heard the argument that, by not tiring yourself so much in the swim, you will perform better in the bike and run portions. In other words, you’ve identified a limiter, or weak spot, and want to improve it.

ii)  you feel there is a bias in your training and you want to correct it, but aren’t sure how.

iii) your bike or run splits are pretty close already to the pros, evidence of a plateau in that discipline, and so are looking elsewhere for improvements.

iv) you’re a decent AGer and want to see how you’d fare in an accessible elite-wave race (e.g. Windsor), thus increasing the relevance of your swim split.

Competitive long-distance swimmer’s training regimes

Apart from getting my 1500m and Divers 2 badges before reaching double digits, I’ve never been a part of a swim club. I can’t lie, I was rubbish when I got in to a pool a couple of years ago as I was readying myself to complete my first triathlons. Things have changed dramatically since joining a swim team here in Mexico (see Nelson Vargas, Aguascalientes) as of last September. Whilst it’s probably still my weakest discipline, I’ve learnt a huge amount from training with a competitive swim team.

As a keen AGer in 2009, I was doing around 10km a week max in the pool, averaging 4 sessions weekly. One thing that has struck me (and tired me like never before), having never been a competitive swimmer, was the change in both distance and number of sessions. There’s undoubtedly a bias on long-distance swimmers where I am - a good thing from my perspective – which has fostered some very good swimmers. In the recent Mexican national trials, 10 of the best swimmers from Nelson Vargas went, winning 26 medals between them with a number of athletes narrowly missing out on the adult Central American Championships. The closest one to qualifying is 13 years old!

Of course I get ridiculed by these studendous swimmers on a daily basis, and, on that subject, let’s have a look at a typical weekly training programme:

                                               Monday   Tuesday   Wednesday   Thursday   Friday   Saturday   Sunday

Morning Session:              3.5k            3.5k                   -                    3.5k          3.5k            6k               -

Afternoon Session:          6k                 6k                   6.5k               6k                 6k             3.5k            -

So that’s 11 sessions a week, 52km!!! Not to mention gym workouts 4 times a week too!!

That’s totally ridiculous I hear you mutter! I’d be inclined to say that you’re right, from a non-competitive swimmer’s perspective. You’d be 100% right when you say that you don’t need to do that amount of training from a triathlon perspective, even if you did have all the time in the world. I myself do the 5 main mid-week sessions, adding my own strength workouts and an easy weekend swim.

So I want to change my swim training. How do I change my regime? “Little and often…”

Aside from sore shoulders, from the above you can take away that, to be a good swimmer, apart from technique, the single biggest factor (cue all the articles that have been written on this topic), you probably need to be doing a swim session almost every day of the week.

Interestingly, and something that many amateur triathletes either don’t know or ignore, is that, speaking to the swim, cycling and run coaches, it’s probably more important to hold down an almost-daily regime of swimming than it is compared with cycling or running; your ‘feel for the water’ goes much faster than your feel for tarmac, bike or running shoes donned. When I brought up the subject with the individual coaches, they highlighted the need to reflect this in my training regime.

Time for a little common sense: you have to put the potential change in regime in the context of your current physical condition; i.e. one small step at a time – don’t jump from doing 2 1-hour swim sessions to 6 1-hour swim sessions a week. Injury is the most likely outcome, not improvement. Maybe start by moving to 4 45-minute sessions, then increasing frequency (per week sessions) and volume (time/distance) as time goes by.

Books like ‘Triathlon Swimming Made Easy’ by Terry Laughlin detail the benefits, but here are a few for convenience: i) your ‘feel for the water’ will improve, ii) any dislike or fear will start to dissipate, iii) and most importantly, you will be able to spend more time focusing on your technique. The relevance of technique is evident from the fact that a 13-year-old teammate was a few seconds away from lining up with the best adults in Central America.

Watch your times – overall, and in the swim-leg – come tumbling down as you adjust your training regime to reflect your weaknesses whilst maintaining your strengths.