Tri On a Budget. It's the engine.

Triathlon can be an expensive hobby/sport. Most of us are not getting paid for this. Sadly. 

For my first tri in 2003, I used my road bike, borrowed a friend’s wetsuit right out of a California surfer's closet circa 1983 (think thick black neoprene with pink and purple polka dots and random colored stripes and lightening bolts. Yeah, everyone knew who this newbie was) and used a pair of old Nike Pegasus. 

Side note about my first tri: I got out of the water (which I didn’t train for - see this post about how short the swim portion is for your day) and it was really easy to find my bike. It was one of four still left in transition. That’s right, when (finally) leaving the swim exit I turned around to see 3 other swim caps left in the water. One of the swimmers decided not to continue and was sitting on a kayak with a lifeguard. Passing my share of people on the bike and not drinking anything from the water bottle I had on the bike, I felt like I was holding my own on the run. Only to be passed by a man who had the body marking with a 72 on his calf. A man who was 40 years older than me was making this triathlon look easy. Two things happened right then and there. One was that I figured out who I wanted to be when I grew up; that guy! The second thing was in order to do this when I’m 72, I should consider training. 

Notice I didn’t say I needed to buy new shoes or race wheels or an aero helmet or drop the equivalent of several mortgage payments on a new bike. Would those have helped? Sure. Triathlon is a sport where keeping your ability exactly as it is you can buy speed. 

For all those of us who enjoy this triathlon lifestyle and aren't independently wealthy, all is not lost. There is however some bad news but there's also a lot of really good news.  

Let's get the bad out of the way. If you own a road bike and the playing field is completely level, a triathlon bike will be faster than a road bike. Now let's be clear on a few things about this road v tri bike conundrum. There are a lot of other variables like how hilly the course is, number of climbs and descents as well as wind conditions. There are circumstances when a road bike does have its merits. Is the course hilly? Roadie, for the win. The now defunct Ironman Blue Ridge 70.3 had almost 1,700 feet of climbing in 5 miles. My legs were burning and several, ahem, dozen road bikes passed me on that climb. I was really wishing for my road bike. But what goes up, must come down and there are about 8 miles of some serious descending. Did I catch some of those roadies on my tri bike? Yes. All of them? Not at all. 

And that's where the good news comes in. It's about the engine propelling that bike = YOU! And the amount of power you're generating based on a proper bike fitting. You don't have to spend a boatload of money on a triathlon-specific bike since for the most part a road bike can do what you need so long as you train properly and are comfortable on that bike. BUT do yourself a favor and pay for a bike fitting. 

End note: I returned to the same triathlon a year later and claimed my first podium spot nabbing 3rd in my age group. Sadly for me, I never saw that 72 year old guy again. Because I have him to thank for my 20-year stint competing in triathlon. 

The swim in an Ironman is only 1.7% of your day

So why focus so much time getting in the pool and swimming yards and yard and yards?

There's this one triathlete you may have heard of named Lucy Charles-Barclay. Saying she's a good swimmer is grave understatement. During her run up to the 2023 Ironman championships in Kona, she was putting in 50,000 meters of swimming per week. Fifty. Thousand. Meters. Per week! Who on earth would ever want to swim that much in a week? Well, the pros. And a pro that led the race from tape-to-tape for 140.6 miles and was crowned a champion. 

She's a fantastic cyclist and a great runner but her swim... her turnover, form and sheer power are something to which we should all aspire.

Most of us are not professional triathletes who can focus full time on their training but there's something we can all learn from Lucy's manner of training. And that's focusing on the swim more. 

First, if you're swimming with less-than-efficient technique, swimming more will only reinforce those same habits. So if you need work on your form (and we all do) I suggest something like TriDot's pool school. I enrolled in Pool School and saw a 7-second drop in my 100-yard all-out effort. And, my form has improved.

So about swimming more; The cardiovascular benefits from swimming are plenty and those benefits are realized in your biking and your running.

    If you swim more consistently, you build cardiovascular endurance which helps you build muscular strength during the bike. The muscular strength and endurance you build on the bike, helps you during the run. This is also why more zone 2 work is critical. Want to be a better cyclist? Swim more. Want to add some more depth to your running? Swim more. Swimming more isn’t just about the benefits of swimming more like getting faster on your swim. Sure, with improved form you could gain some faster times but more importantly it sets you up for the rest of your day. As one triathlete I spoke to said about race day and doing all three portions of the triathlon, “you have to float from the start to the end of the swim to the beginning of the actual race. Then you have to make sure you eat at the all-you-brought buffet on your bike to set yourself up for a good run.” Too many triathletes think the swim is so short (see the title of this post) and therefore don’t really have to train a lot for it. 

Do you have the capacity?

Any one of us on this planet has the ability to incredible things. Barring injury, any human has the ability to complete an Ironman distance triathlon tomorrow if we needed to. That's right. I'm talking about swimming 2.4 miles, or for the other 99% of the world, a 3.9km swim, we could bike 112 miles or 180.2km of biking and a then run a marathon, 26.2 miles 42.2km. But a few things come in to play here:

1. How long would it take you?
2. How much would you enjoy it?
3. How injured might you get?
4. How likely would you be willing to do this again?

Answer to these questions are as follows:

1. Too long
2. Not at all
3. Everything hurts
4. Rarely in my life do I use the word 'never' but it certainly applies in this situation

The other answers to these questions lie in your training.

Are you spending time in the pool building aerobic endurance? Are you spending quality time in the saddle to build muscular endurance? And are you running enough (hint: it's less than you think) quality miles to benefit from you swim and bike without causing injury to yourself?

I subscribe to the philosophy that any one of us is capable of great things. It is the amount of capacity we have from our training that allows us to reach our goals. 

How is your capacity?