Why Swimming Training is Important in Tri

My vow for 2012 (or one of them) was to blog more consistently.

You'd think I'd learn after 41.5 years on this planet that making any kind of resolution, especially one dictated on January 1, will result in FAIL. Had I not made that commitment I likely would have posted every day for the last month.

Anyway.

I wanna write about swimming.
And triathlon.
And how so many triathletes create reasons why blowing off swim training in favor of other training, or even in favor of no training, makes sense.

I, for one, have had enough of this view. Enough! Triathlon consists of three athletic disciplines, and one of them is swimming. If you don't like to swim, or you don't want to train the swim, or even if you don't have the time to swim because you need to spend every ounce of your limited free time on the bike and run, become a duathlete and shut the fuck up.

What follows is my diatribe against the powers that believe swim training is expendable. My arguments are based in logic, not research, so are easily attack-able. Still, I'm right. Just saying.

It might be true that no one ever won a triathlon by crushing the swim portion of a triathlon (although I think I could argue that, in fact, some races HAVE been won on the swim--(namely by Angela Bancroft, ranked number 4 in her AG this year by USAT, btw... ). It is also true, however, that races have been lost on the swim. (I lost a sprint just last year because an ITU girl out-swam me, for example. Although I posted faster times than she did on the bike and run, I was never able to catch her after my mediocre swim and her devastatingly fast one.) So to those of you who are blowing off the swim in your training, I say get your scrawny little running and biking heinies over to the pool, or you will be one of those losers. I promise.

Here are the arguments against swimming:

Reason #1:
You swim for like an hour--maybe 1.5 hours in a long course tri.
You bike for like 5+ hours.
You run for like 3+ hours.
Hence, you should spend far less time training the swim (or no time, according to some) than the bike and the run.

Reason #2:
If you are a 1:15 or faster swimmer for IM, you probably won't get much faster even if you train the swim very hard and consistently. (I'm not sure where this reasoning originated, but it seems quite popular...)The possible time gain on IM day is not worth the training hours put in to achieve that time gain.

Reason #3:
Swimming is all technique. You don't need fitness to swim fast--you just need "to be efficient in the water." Therefore, you should spend limited time in the pool, and when you are there, you should only work on your technique.

There are probably other stated reasons to blow off swim training. However, I think these are the most common arguments triathletes use to justify it.

Here's why the aforementioned reasons are total bullshit:

1. Okay, this one isn't total bullshit. You should spend more time training the bike and run (especially the bike) than the swim. Most long course triathletes I know (who believe in swimming) swim between 3-5 hours a week, and usually not longer than that.  Most of these same triathletes spend considerably more than 3-5 hours each week on the bike and run, however. That said, if you are racing long course and only logging about 3000-4000 yards of slog each week, or worse, somehow justifying not swimming at all, you can be quite sure your swim will suck come race day.

Long course racing is about persevering over fatigue. The training we do serves to condition both our bodies and minds to deal with the exhaustion of going and going and going.... The goal is to make it to each leg of the race still completely intact and ready to meet the demands of the remaining part of the race. The swim only lasts between 1-2 hours for nearly all long course athletes, but the amount of energy you expend on the swim directly affects the energy you have in reserve for the bike and run. Of course it does! If you swim minimally in training you go into the swim portion of the race both physically and mentally under-prepared to swim hard for an hour +.  You exit the water battered, bruised, exhausted and with a shit swim time to boot. Conversely, if you spend even just 3 hours a week training the swim year round, you can be assured that you will have the confidence and the stamina to insure your swim is of little consequence in terms of fatigue expenditure.  You want to come out of the water feeling like your swim was just a blip--a little warm up to the rest of the day. If you don't train the swim then that is NOT how you will experience the swim on race day. Don't feed me bullshit about how this is not true... I don't care who you are or what kind of a swimmer you are. If you don't do any work on your swim, the swim will kick your ass, and you will prematurely exhaust yourself before 8 am on race day.

What I think is funny is that you never hear the argument that you should bike and run in favor of the swim from  swimmers turned triathletes. Swimmers know that to swim even slightly fast you need to spend TONS of time in the water.

Let's compare Michael Phelps and Kara Goucher in terms of training time.
Phelps, according to most sources, swims an average of 8 miles a day (13,200 yards), 50 miles a week (about 80,000) yards and spend more than 30 hours a week training. Phelps swims many events, but his longest event is usually the 400 meter IM. The 400 meter IM--for Phelps--lasts just over FOUR MINUTES. Yet he trains 30 hours a week. Of course, he is also expected to swim many events, all out, in any given meet. That requires a stamina that requires extensive training for sure.

Now let's take Goucher. From what I could find, Goucher runs between 110-120 miles per week for a total of 11-13 hours of run time. She also does Pilates and strength work, which brings her weekly training up to, at most, 18-20 hours per week. Yet Goucher's longest event? 2 hours and 25 minutes. So Goucher trains at least 33% fewer hours per week on her discipline than Phelps does on his, but she spends 36 TIMES more time running during her key event than Phelps does competing in his. Don't you find that interesting? And what do you think it says about volume needed to swim well versus volume need to run well??

And, of course, running is much harder on the body than swimming. She can't spend as much time logging miles as Phelps can/does logging meters.
But wait, did you just read that?
Could it be that perhaps we should be spending MORE TIME IN the pool building sport specific aerobic and upper body strength, b/c we simply can't spend that much time on the run without risking injury? And is it also possible that swim training requires a much higher ratio of training to racing time in order to achieve at a high level than running does? Methinks... perhaps....

Okay, onto negating reason #2.
I'm not sure who decided that 1:15 was the magic number, but some folks seem to believe that if you can swim an open water 2.4 mile swim in 1:15 or faster, you won't make any more significant gains in terms of swim speed unless you log a lot more time. That time, the time it would take to make you faster than 1:15, would be better spent training the bike or the run. The reasoning, it seems, is that if you don't spend extra time swimming you can MAINTAIN that 1:15. You then put that extra time toward the bike and run, resulting in a gain of speed in those two disciplines.

Here's the problem. You can't just maintain a 1:15 when you don't swim enough. Let me explain. If you finish in 1:15, I'm sorry, you are not a "swimmer." You may have swam when you were a kid on a rec team, or you may have worked steadily to improve a swim you learned as an adult. But if you swam competitively through high school, and definitely if you swam through college, you can complete an IM swim in much, much faster than 1:15.   It is possible that a swimmer with a competitive background who can swim sub one hour with solid swim training might be able to get away with limited swim training and complete an IM swim in 1:05 or so. (This does not take into consideration the amount of fatigue--fatigue that would affect the bike and run--accrued in doing so, of course.) However, an adult who does not have a competitive background in swimming who has improved her/his swim to a 1:15 per sheer work and will, will bomb the IM swim without continuous proper swim training. This is because they do not have that competitive background (read experience) in the sport, and hence have no foundation from which to draw. Without consistent training to maintain it, that 1:15 devolves quickly into a 1:25--or a 1:35-- or slower. And last I checked there were very few athletes on the podium with swims that slow... even if their bikes and runs did rock the house.

Finally, reason #3.
If you are a part of a masters group that has a coach who WATCHES you swim day in and out, then you might make improvements in your swim technique. You also might make improvements if you take the time to study swim videos online and bring that visual knowledge to your training, and try to implement it. However, I can pretty much guarantee that if you do drills to improve your technique--alone--with no one watching to critique you--you are wasting your time. People who swim well have worked for years on both their fitness AND their technique, but they have done so with the help of a coach, or a group, or careful study. If you don't have a coach or you aren't studying online videos of excellent swimmers, your technique will not improve. Developing better swim technique requires time--and if you are blowing off swimming in favor of the bike and run, well obviously you are not doing that, right? That said, you can have excellent technique but still be slow if you don't develop any swim fitness. Granted, you won't be as slow as the person who has no technique at all, even if said person swims daily, but still, like ANY sport you need swim fitness (not bike or run fitness) to SWIM well.

I think what bothers me most about the swim less movement is that grounded within it is the idea that there might be a short cut to becoming a competitive IMer.
There's not.
You know it. I know it. 
Swimming builds your upper body strength, it develops aerobic fitness without stressing joints, and most importantly, it is a PART of triathlon and triathlon training. If you're looking to try to get the most bang for your buck in terms of training time, don't fall prey to the idea that a half hour more spent on the bike each week will translate into a better race time than a half hour that SHOULD be spent on the swim. It won't.