David Cuthbert ([info]dacut) wrote,
@ 2009-05-24 20:57:00
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Triathlon distances
What I don't get about most triathlons: the swims are usually short, often not even half-marathons. My casual swim workout is longer than most tri swims. These are followed by ridiculously long bike rides and marathon or longer runs.

IronMan Canada, I'm looking at you. Which of these things is not like the other?
  • A 180 km bike ride
  • A 42.2 km run
  • A 3800 m swim

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[info]blackacre
2009-05-25 03:40 pm UTC (link)
Depending on what your specialty is, one of the distances is going to sound out of wack.

Like I could never be a triathlete since I can't swim more than like...100 meters at a time. But even if I wanted to learn...I could learn the bike. The idea of being able to bike over a century isn't even all that intimidating. However, the idea of swimming even 200 meters scares the crap out of me. ;p Likewise, I've found swimmers tend to convert to either running or biking easily. Or cyclists to the run. But its rare anyone doesn't have issues with ONE of the distances unless they happened to train do to a tri at a young age.

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[info]dacut
2009-05-25 05:08 pm UTC (link)
Most triathletes dislike the swim, so most triathlons make the swim portion short (to boost the number of entrants). Now, I have no misconceptions about being able to do IronMan Canada -- I'd have a hard time running more than 3 miles, let alone 26. :-) I'm just surprised that the swimming leg is so ridiculously short.

The usual rule of thumb is that swimming requires 4x the effort to cover the same distance as running. Hence why a marathon swim is considered 10 km.

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[info]blackacre
2009-05-25 05:26 pm UTC (link)
Funny because the idea of swimming 2.5 miles is beyond terrifying to me whereas I'm not intimidated at all by the run distance.

Seriously though, its far easier to convert from swim --> run than vice versa. The best tri people I know were swimmers who learned to run since its far easier to learn to run later than it is to swim. ;)

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