The only factor that could really have held me back from getting into triathlon was swim. It really was my main concern, no kidding. When I was like 7 years old, I was lucky enough thanks to my parents to learn the basic of swimming, but I never really had a chance to practice it throughout the years. Which was fine, because I really didn't like it. So when it came to the necessity of spending time in the pool, then having to swim for an hour in open water, surrounded by hundreds of people I was like « please get me out of this nightmare already. » Did I change my mind throughout that year of triathlon ? Absolutely not, my lord. I definitely hate swimming; it was really a love-hate relationship. I remember my last training before IronMan Switzerland getting out of the pool and thinking : «Yaaaaaaas no more pool ever ! » What a fool... I don't consider myself a good swimmer, apart from a short lap of time in the middle of the season where I was able to swim some 400's series around the 1'30" per 100 metres. At that time, I managed to get a 31:35 time at IronMan 70.3 Mallorca which was more or less decent, but that's it. I then started to willingly regress — I will explain why in a few lines — to finally end up with a 1:12:00 swim time at IronMan Switzerland placing me only 587th overall out of 1,553 athletes. That's bad for someone considering a #SUB10 performance, and I think that it's actually close to the limit to achieve that time. Now that you get the context, I don't feel confident giving advice as there is good chance you're already better than I am. Expect a short chapter compared to bike and running ones, but I will still try to help the best I can.
Just a few minutes before Challenge Almere-Amsterdam start, calling what’s gonna come next...
Swim is more or less useless
« Has the guy lost his mind or what ? » may sound a reasonable thing to think reading that title I agree. It's provocative on purpose, even though I'm truly thinking it. When your goal is to qualify in your age group for the world championship, then absolutely no details can be left in the sand, and being able to swim 3,800 metres in less than 60 minutes seems to be mandatory. But if you're seeking a potential #SUB10 performance — not even mentioning just finishing the race — then you have to remember that swimming only accounts for just a little bit more than 10% of your final time. So when you have a full-time job and / or a family to take care of, and already hours of training to deal with in your schedule, something has to be sacrificed. I decided to put the swim on the altar, for these reasons :
- Delta between decent and good swimmer is not worthy. Swimming is not about strength, nor stupid volume pedaling like the bike, it's all about technique. It's an incredibly hard sport and iIhave much, much respect for the athletes mastering it. That being said, how much ahead of me in T1 would a good swimmer be compared to me ? Let's say 10 minutes or something. But getting that gap means probably swimming four or five times more than I did. Sorry to say it, but that's a pretty stupid return on investment, because meanwhile a pretty good cyclist would put me 40 minutes behind on the saddle. That's a 30 minutes gap between both sport, I will let that sink in there.
- Too time-consuming. When I had to train on the bike, all I had to do was to go on my home trainer, and when I had to train on the run, all I had to do was to put my shoes on and go down the stairs. Easy peasy. Just the action of getting into the water was at another level : driving to the pool with Paris traffic, finding a lane with no old ladies, waiting for an available shower, driving back home with even worse Paris traffic, etc. I did the maths and just the “what's around swimming” was accounting for 60 minutes, so roughly 120 minutes for the whole swim session. Yikes. I can't just give that much time for just 10% of a total IronMan race time; that's utterly pointless compared to the time difference you can make on the bike and on the run. Again.
All those points doesn't mean I didn't swim and waited for magic to happen on race day. I did 250 kilometres in the pool in a just a year, and that's already a pretty decent number I guess. But when you put all the numbers together, it only accounts for 12% of my total training time as discussed earlier.
Remember that swimming only accounts for just a little bit more than 10% of your final time.
Sacrifice the swim the smart way
Once I understood that my delta between my top-notch performance and my okay performance was alarmingly low, I had to figure out how to be the most efficient possible. I gave it a lot of tries, and I think that toward the end I managed to get something solid out of it acknowledging these points :
- Save the long swim. I actually got my first 4,000 metre swim straight only 3 weeks prior to IronMan Switzerland. I inherently knew I would be able to do it — fortunately — but I didn't want to waste energy that was more useful on my bike and run training. So I waited until the peak phase to get that swim done at least once to ensure the confidence and endurance was there.
- Get rid of drills. Technique is everything when it comes to swim, and having the basic of swimming is absolutely mandatory that's for sure. But once you get a good sense of your whole-body positioning, the time cost of improving just by 1% is too high. So do some drills for warm-up including paddles and BUOY, but just don't spend a whole session a week doing this.
- Get a coach. Or buy a GoPro. Or watch YouTube. Of all the disciplines, it's probably with the swim that a coach can make the most difference. When you're in the pool, you can't see yourself swimming, and if you record yourself using a camera you will instantly see tons of wrong things you're doing you would not have been aware of otherwise. Having a coach is allowing instant feedback, where a camera requires an analysis afterwards. Last option — the one I actually picked — is to get some YouTube sessions. There is an incredible amount of swim technique content done by very talented swimmers out there, and it was very effective to me to use the slow down function of the YouTube player to break down movements and try to apply it to my next swim session.
- Go ham. This point is a copy & paste of the bike training. There is no reason to not go big on the few swim sessions you will have every week. Do a solid warm-up including some effective drills, then have a main set full of intensity. Get rid of the cool-down part, or limit it.
- Get into a group. This is probably the biggest mistake I made in my IronMan training looking back on it. Hitting the pool with a local swim or triathlon club can be incredibly helpful compared to bike and running, as you're working on your pacing in a race scenario, drafting to say it in another way. This is something I've struggled with time and time again during the swim leg : having a good sense of others pace, the opportunity to draft a particular guy, if not the time needed to overpass and the energy cost associated. I was learning while I was racing, and if race experience is indeed invaluable, those kind of things should have been learnt in the pool. Should I come back to triathlon, I will try to do at least a weekly session in a swim group.
Who am I to discuss technique ?
There is not much I could share with you, dear reader, when it comes to technique, because I was really that average guy. But you never know, this is the Internet, and there is always something that can stand out from time to time. So here's my take on the easiest things to apply that I learnt and that really helped me to improve :
280 kilometres clocked in the pool in a year, oh gosh I still do nightmare about it.
- Forget the legs. This is so obvious that I thought not writing about, but well... Be a good boy Sasha, be exhaustive. In the water legs are burning twice the energy of your arms for a similar propulsion. Out of the water, you will have 180 kilometres of bike and 42 kilometres of run; don't build fatigue just for the sake of one or two minutes swim time saved.
- Relax. It took me quite a while to really get the benefits of loosening my body. Reducing the useless muscular tensions can be such a big help to get the best horizontal position possible. Don't force your movements, feel the water vibe and play along with it, think like you're dancing the tango.
- Hands down in the water. This is maybe the most interesting trick of the list, and clearly has been a game changer for my swim form. Once the hand enters the water, don't keep it close to the surface, but send it straight 20 centimetres deep. This will help you to release a lot of pressure off your back.
- Keeping one eye into the water. This one is not easy to master whatever people will say, but managing to keep one eye in the water while breathing will dramatically reduce your overall drag, thus improving your pace and fatigue reduction.
- Progressive force is key. As I wrote, I watched tons of video on YouTube, and if I have understood anything from good swimmers, it's that they don't have perfect movements for the vast majority of them. But they share one thing : Their hands don't move at a constant speed throughout the whole movement. The acceleration is powerful, yet constant throughout the whole movement.
I don't think it's worth getting into the details of my training routine directly here as it was quite simple and repetitive, but you will, like all the rest find it in the workouts chapter.
All I can conclude with is that you can break the #SUB10 with a rough swim time, as long as your body is used to swimming and is not generating useless fatigue from these 3,800 metres.