Any suggestions for doing a first tri event? My swimming is terrible, but I live within walking distance of a YMCA, of which we have a family membership. I have a friend who is also looking to do his first. He's a good runner, not so good cyclist. So we might be OK training partners. Anyone know of a good beginning tri club in San Diego? Thought I would try here first before venturing out.
Thanks.
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Thinking of doing my first tri this year, need help
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Well, you live in the tri capital of the US, so it should be easy. North County has a few clubs, or you can check in w/ Leslie Paterson and her Braveheart coaching - she has some beginner camps and a free weekly workout in season in Mission Bay. She's the xterra world tri pro, so she and her husband (sports scientists and ex racing cyclist) know a thing or two about endurance and tri racing. I think the weekly workout is thru Tri Club of SD, so should be easy to track down.
In July in Solana Beach, there is a very nice event (forgt the name) - check out active.com. B&L used to be the sponsoring shop.
My high level advice:
1) Choose a few events, get your first one out of the way early (ie by March) just to get into the swing. I'd start with a sprint just because its a low key, low pressure entry point.
2) Swim - warm up well. If you have any anxiety about mass start, it is a bit of a pain, but less a mess than many say. If it's open water (very likely in SD), be sure to practice in open water.
3) Spend some time in each sport, but I wouldn't ignore cycling too much if that's your strength.
There is tons of advice, etc so that is easy to find. I'd say just have fun and get out there and the rest follows. Tris can make people neurotic with all the gear and advice, but the basic principles aren't as difficult. Lots of base plus lactate threshold work intervals basically and good sport specific body mechanic drills (ie swim stroke for freestyle).
Oh, and many events are majority female now, so lots of distractions ;-)
j
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hpl - I hear ya on the swimming issue. I dreaded it when I first tstarted doing tris. I still suck at it, but have come to really enjoy my open water swims (still not a huge fan of the pool).
I bought the Velopress book "Swimming Workouts for Triathletes" and focuses primarily on the Endurance workouts (as that is what I sorely lacked). My advice is to not worry much about speed and intensity right now. Get in the water and swim as much as possible.
75m used to wipe me out if I swam freestyle. But I could breast stroke pretty well. So I started doing my workouts doing one length freestyle, the next breast. So if it was a 500m set, I would end up doing 250 / 250. Then the next week or 2 later, I would do 50m free / 25m breast. etc.
Basically I would get to a point where I reduced eliminated my "rest" lengths using the breaststroke, but using it when I needed allowed me to build up my endurance.
I would also recommend using a pull buoy, which can help build your endurance.
Running - follow the "BarryP Plan" below. The idea is to basically run frequently (6 out of 7 days) but for shorter durations in order to get your body used to the rigors of running.
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1612485;search_string=runtraining;#1612485
There is a lot of good information on Slowtwitch, but a lot of attitude as well.
Feel free to PM me w/ any questions. Time for me to get back in the pool!!
Just say "NO!!" to WCP!
"Want to get faster? Work harder, eat better, cut the crap. Instead of talking the talk, work the work" -
Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
The wise man said follow me...and he walked behind. -
One other thought - target a Sprint race for your first event. Don't feel like you need to do something silly like a Half-Ironman, Ironman or even an Olympic distance race. There is a lot to be learned just from doing the shorter races, figuring out the tranitions, etc.
Also, resist the "cyclists urge" to go all out on the bike. You still gotta run after the bike, and most tri's are about the run.
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If you want to do tris....
step 1 ..forget how to ride a bike.....bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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Go to slow twitch!
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Swimming=Controlled drowning
I ran an 8-miler on Saturday morning 20 minutes after spinning about 45-50 minutes on my trainer - my legs were rubber for the first 1/2 mile.
Along the lines what CK said, I would run shorter distances, but do the run's after biking.
Life is too short to be small. - Disraeli
So, why not be petty? - The Short White Guy™ -
To paraphrase Yoda: "No. Tri not. Do... or do not. There is no tri."
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Yo Mike
There is Ménage à trois ...not all Tris are bad.
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Swimming: "form" or "feel" for the water is very, very important. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of good swim stroke, and its difficulty. As an example, I used to take 15 strokes per 25m; the best swimmer on our team took more like 11. That's a HUGE difference in expended energy. Find a coach to give you some advice, or just a friend who's a good swimmer. Spend some time doing some drills (one arms, kickboards, arms only laps, etc.), look up some slow-mo video of good swimmers. It's been 20 years since I was on a swim team, but I guarantee it will kick your butt, and form will save you.
And when you panic on your first mass-start, just breastroke for awhile and dream of the vengeance you'll have once you hit the bike.
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I've only gotten a sense of panic in one race while swimming...but that was because I started off too fast, got gassed after a couple hundred meters and was in the middle of the scrum....couldn't breast stroke to catch my breath. Not fun!
That said, I often get a sense of panic during my warm-up in the pool. Somewhere around 200m, I get short of breath, have a urge to gasp for air or stop. But I just gut through it and am good after another 25m. I think it is similar to doing a couple of jumps on the bike to open up the systems...but you don't have the risk of drowning, so no sense of panic. I now expect it, know what to do when I feel it and it is no big deal. Just part of the warm-up process.
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work on extremely poor bike handling skills and wearing arm warmers with sleeveless jerseys, but for the love of God don't do this:
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Schitt....if I can ever get to a full IM distance, I HOPE I can pee on the bike. A skill I have never learned, neither euro-style or tri-style.
I can get through a half IM w/o needing to pee. A full IM? Doubt it...
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"Thinking of doing my first tri this year, need help"
am I the only one who read this as a cry for help?
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CK, if you get through a full Ironman without peeing I think you'll have far bigger worries than learing to do it off the bike. ;-)
I would second the suggestion of doing a sprint distance race. Do as many as you can. It will help you refine your transitions and get used to riding after swimming and running after riding.
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HP - mental help? seriously, I have a few friends who made the transition and they are enjoying the events. You should be able to find a few Tri clubs in SD county. If memory serves me right North County was home to several Tri groups.
Expect to see several VeloSport riders/racers heading your way for the SD Tri.
Jah - too funny!
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Learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim. Take a couple few years, but learn to swim. Take lessons, swim with the masters, swim alone, learn to swim. Plan a minimum of 4-5 days a week in the pool for the first 5 years. That is all I have to say about that.
I always chuckle at people that don't swim and think they are triathletes. Like a person thinking they would like to be a music teacher,but don't know how play an instrument. You are living in the mothership of tri sports, I'm thinking you are a pretty good rider that can run are the easy parts to learn. A couple years you could be at the top of your game as a duathlete. Probably takes a good five years to be a fast swimmer. Have patients,it will come.
I think it is a bad plan to not work hard on your swimming to catch up to the herd. I have known plenty of people that sucked 20 years ago in swimming that do triathlons and still suck in swimming and do triathlons.. I know a few that swam like a rockfish 20 years ago and are pretty darn fast swimmers in the age group now. More than cycling, triathlon is a total time suck and a lifestyle. Balancing your time is critical, and swimming is very important.
Bad swimmers lose time and expend more energy going slow than good swimmers make up time and use less energy going fast. Bottom line however to winning triathlons is how fast you can run off the bike. My history in triathlon was out of the water in the top 5-10 people, 1st off the bike and hope to hell I didn't die on the run. Can't tell you how many top 10 finishes over all I got, that I lost the race on the run. I could get off the bike and run a 37-38 min 10 k and still lose 5-7 minutes on the fast guys. Ouch, then I got old. -
+1 to what velojo said re: swimming. I have what ST'ers affectionately refer to as "Adult Onset Swimming."
;-)
I know I need to swim more and get in a Masters program....but I also freely admit that I am completely intimidated by it. Overcoming your weakness in swimming takes a lot of time and effort.
However, the longer the race distance, the less critical the swim becomes. Not saying ti isn't important, because it is....but it becomes less critical in terms of time. They key, IMO (and velojo alluded to it), is efficiency. You don't necessarily need to be "fast" in the water, but you absolutely need to be efficient. Getting out of the water exhausted is setting you up for failure, no matter what your time is, fast or slow.
It also all depends on what your goals are....if you just wanna complete a tri, then don't kill yourself re: the swimming. Just become competent. If you wanna do well, get used to looking at the black line on the bottom of the pool.
Oh yeah....and get a waterproof iPod Shuffle from Waterfi.com to help kill the time. ;-) Best swimming investment I have ever made.
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Whoops....double post.
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That black line on the bottom of the pool is one of the reasons I quit swimming. It got so I would hallucinate sharks swimming out of it, just to kill the boredom.
But, in all seriousness, you can get much, much better at swimming with maybe 5 hours/week invested in it. But you would need to work efficiently, which means finding a swimming coach, who would kick your butt for the first month or so. And make you do form drills until you puked (which I did).
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Form drills vs. just swimming seems to be a growing subject of some controversy now in triathlons. Many will tell you to swim, swim a lot and swim some more. That position says fitness is the biggest limiter and by focusing on endurance, and swimming "a lot", you will naturally figure out better mechanics. (Note - these people also recommend using toys like pull buoys, paddles and fins to assist in the development of both technique and endurance).
Those from a more "traditional" background seem to advocate technique first.
Personally, I can see the value in both. For some people, their form is truly horrendouns (gello!) and need the technique work. For others, they can swim well enough that addressing the fintess aspect helps with form.
Last year, I spent most of my pool time using a pool buoy, which was great for developing a "high elbow" stroke...as long as I used a pool buoy or swam in a wetsuit. But without, my mechanics still sucked....but I did get faster.
If I do the full IM @ Louisville this year, it is a non-wetsuit swim, so I am dumping the pull buoy, switching to fins and working on my kick more. We'll see....
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Good on you Cosmic. If you do so much better with the pull buoy than without, there is something wrong going on down below. Legs are important for positioning in distance swimming, but a two beat kick that just keeps your body nice and horizonal in the water.is not a bad thing for triathlon
I was a butterflyer in college so I got stuck in the 500 or the 1,000 free in dual meets. Having big ole cycling legs I would use the kick to my advantage in strong finishes or to put a move on someone in the distance events. When they invented triathlon it took me a couple years to figure out to slow the energy expenditure from the legs and save it for the run and bike.
For the other guys, if you push off the wall with your arms in the Superman position and just easily kick and you either go backwards, sink, just plain flounder. You need to lessons not practice. Cosmic, I am in the camp of long and smooth strokes. I used to coach my HS swimmers to use high elbows and they all looked beautiful. Then I did come to learn that looking pretty doesn't make you faster. But if you look like a drowning monkey in the water you will be very tired and slow out of the water. There is a compromise.If you are interested in the tri, I would suggest changing the channel to Slowtwitch dot com, but you think we is crazy on this forum, wait till you read their levels of crap on the internet.
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Yeah, I know my body position w/o a buoy needs help....and I am a 6 beat kicker (at least!!), so that again reinforces that I am compensating for a poor body position.
On the agenda this year is a Masters program and occasional lessons from a swim coach. (Buffy...wanna split a lesson w/ Mary?)
Preach it, brother! There is a LOT of really good info there...and a lot of bad as well. But if you pay attention to the fishes on that board (and there are a lot), you can pick up some great swimming advice.If you are interested in the tri, I would suggest changing the channel to Slowtwitch dot com, but you think we is crazy on this forum, wait till you read their levels of crap on the internet.
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Have you tried any of the Total Immersion drills? I taught myself to swim when I was 40 and TI really helped me undo a bunch of bad habits.
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