Triathlon Swim Tips

by Mike Flegel
Triathlon coach

You've put in countless laps in the pool and now you're ready to hit the open water for the start of your triathlon. While the basics are the same (you're still doing that same freestyle stroke), open-water swimming and pool-swimming do have distinct differences.

First of all, make sure that you know the layout of the course - how many marker buoys do you go around? What direction are we going? Do we keep the buoys on our left or on our right? Know the location of the finish of the swim and try to envision what it will look like from the water. What's marking the water exit? Buoys? Some distinct colored matting? If the swim start and swim finish are in the same area, try to swim out a bit during your warm-up and look back at the shore to see what it looks like from the water. Once we're set on the layout of the course, it's warm-up time. The more you train endurance capability in your muscles, the more time it takes to get them functioning well aerobically. Take a look at how you swim in your training. If your body is used to doing a 10-minute warm-up prior to tackling the big sets, then just doing 20 strokes out and back probably isn't going to do it for you. Try to do at least 5 minutes of continuous swimming, but not going more than 50m or so from the start line (just in case. . . .). Throw in some backstroke swimming to open up your shoulders so that they're warm and stretched out in all directions.

With a wetsuit on, you should be able to float around in the water for a couple of minutes after warming up without your muscles cooling off too much. While waiting for the start, seed yourself so that you won't get run over by the aggressive-fast swimmers, and you won't get held up by the back-markers either. As a general rule, the best swimmers out there probably go about 1:10 per 100m (continuous swimming) in a pool; usually, each race has a relatively small number of these folks, and relatively few between that level and the 1:30 per 100m. The greatest concentration of swimmers is usually those between about 1:35 and 1:50 per 100m in a pool. So if you're a competitive swimmer, go to the front of the pack. If you're a 1:30 per 100 swimmer in the pool and you're at the front of the pack, be prepared to have a number of people swim over or through you - neither of which is very pleasant. If you're in the 1:40-1:50 range, somewhere in the middle of the pack should work well for you, and if you're in the 2:00+ per 100m zone, line up in the back of the pack somewhere.

When the start signal goes, RELAX. Most likely, you've got a two-hour-plus race ahead of you. If you were starting a marathon run, would you sprint like a crazy person over the first 400m? Probably not. You want to go out just a bit faster than the pace you'd like to hold throughout the course of the race, but not much more. If you feel yourself going anaerobic and you're having trouble catching your breath, just slow down and make sure you're taking deep breaths and FULLY EXHALING under the water. It's a common mistake that people make when they're totally pumped - they're breathing in tons, but not getting rid of enough air, which leads to stale air in the lungs, which means no oxygen-rich blood getting to the muscles.

Once things have settled down and you've established your swimming pace, you might notice that in a lake or ocean swim, there's no thick black line on the bottom to keep you going in a straight line. In fact, if the water is deep or a little murky, all you see when you're face is in the water is black nothingness! So you're going to need a strategy to make the distance that you swim as short as possible - taking the shortest distance between all of the buoys marking the course. The first strategy is to follow the feet in front of you. This works great if the person in front of you is a bit faster than you (by staying close and drafting off them, you can go a bit faster than you normally would swimming on your own) and goes in a straight line. But if those feet decide to take the scenic route around the swim course, you could be in for a 2000m swim instead of the 1500m that you signed up for.

For this reason, it's a good idea to “sight” while you're swimming. Ideally, you should practice this in the pool occasionally. I would recommend getting a good visual reference of where you're going at least once every 25m. In the pool, then, on at least one set per workout, get a visual fix on something at the end of the pool at least once per length (twice if you're lucky enough to be training in a long course 50m pool). It's OK to take a bit longer on that stroke to make sure that you get your eyes on what you're looking for. Also, be prepared to not get a breath on this stroke. If you can, that's great, but most likely, you're going to get a face-full of water.

When doing the swim in the actual race, then, do the same thing. You should have an idea of how many strokes it takes you to do a 25 in the pool. Most likely, you'll be around 9-12 stroke cycles (both arms having pulled through the water) per 25m. So roughly once every 10 stroke cycles, take a look to make sure you're pointing in the direction that you want to be going. Now, admittedly, the buoys that most races have marking the swim are huge when you're swimming right past them, but when it's 500 or more metres away and you're swimming through chop, it's like trying to pick out your “lucky number” our of the 49 balls in the lotto drum. So try to find something higher on the horizon that is in line with the buoy. Maybe there's a distinctive hill, tree, clearing, house, cabin, or whatever that's behind the buoy that you can fix on. Beware, though, that if you're using a big boat, they move sometimes.

When you come around a buoy and make the turn to start the next leg of the swim, take a couple of seconds doing head-up breastroke or something to get a firm visual on where the next buoy is. I'm usually one of the first out of the water, and at least two or three times in each swim, I'm treading water for a few strokes to get a good look at where I'm going - making sure that I'm not missing any buoys. This is where having a good knowledge of the course is vital. If you're making a wide circle marked by five large buoys (which you can easily see while standing on the beach prior to the start), make sure you go around five buoys prior to heading to the beach. I recently did a race where probably 50 people totally skipped the last buoy heading into finish, thus disqualifying themselves. After all your preparation, it's a shame to have your race over before you even get on your bike.

As you approach the finish, keep swimming at least until your hands start scraping the bottom. While it might look really shallow, it's really tough to run - in a wetsuit - through water that's any deeper than just below the knees. Running 50m through water that is up above your knees will drive your heart-rate through the roof - not the way you really want to start the bike.

Once you're out of the water, peel off that wetsuit as quickly as possible, pull on your helmet, grab your bike and start hammerin' those pedals.