swimming

I started more or less on my own, but then decided to get some lessons to make sure I wasn't going to ingrain any bad habits. It wasn't too expensive, I think I did 10 30 minute lessons over 10 weeks, and swam about 4 to 6 times per week in between.

I watched a lot of videos on you tube, bought 2 books, total immersion, and swim speed secrets. Visited the "swim smooth," website, and watched that animation guy a lot. I even brought my video camera and mounted it on a tripod at the pool (530am so no one would have an issue).

Besides that, I just swam a lot. Some good days, some bad, but the more I went, the better I got.

The previous two posts have pretty much covered what you have to do but I would add - don't put it off to start swim training - get going right away. You may be a natural and pick it up easy but you may not so start PDQ.

You may be strong in the bike and run but you need to be able to do the swim, come out of the water and then keep going.

Have fun with it.

Swimming is, in the opinion of many here, the most technique-intemsive of the three disciplines. Getting some good coaching is a great idea so you don't develop any bad habits that may be difficult to break later on.

What others have said. Getting lessons right away would be my suggestion. I learned to swim last year. At first, I could make it down to the other side of the pool and then be exhausted for minute. I spent a year learning to swim myself and getting the Total Immersion DVD (which now people say is bad since you'll never excel in swimming with it). I now have a coach looking at me once/week and I've slowly went from 2:00/100yds to 1:50/100yds. Even though I've only swam for a year, I picked up and engrained a bad catch, bad body rotation, and bad head/posture. To me, I felt like I was doing everything right but once I had someone look at me, their head just started shaking

Well that's quite a pickle.

You didn't say if you were even swimming yet. Are you? You need to get to the pool ASAP. Find out what distance you can safely manage continuous freestyle. That means not stopping. Then take a break and and repeat. If is just 25 yards so be it, hit the wall and do it again. If you end up with 500 yards the frist swim again so be it just keep at it. Little by little just continue to build. Maybe the first weeks swim 2 times a week the second week and following weeks swim 3 times. Good luck.

Get someone to coach you. Look for local organised swim lessons and find out if they have a drop in policy. Or a masters group.

I dropped in on my local 'adult endurance hour session' and enjoyed doing the drills. Only got 10 minutes of 1:1 coaching but immediately I am told:

"your kick is huge!!'

I saw an immediate improvement from something I could never have noticed on my own.

Get in a pool as soon as possible followed directly by finding a good local coach. I'd also look into joining a local masters swim program. With the masters you may be able to package some coaching with the ability to swim with others that will help push and motivate you. Any good masters coach will take the time to point out things you an work on during each swim session, especially if you talk to them before about your background and goals. They can likely help you find a good coach as well if you want more one on one time.

Don't want to be discouraging but "a few months" may not be enough time, depending on your swim background. If you're already comfortable in the water and can swim several hundred meters/yards, it's probably just a matter of getting some feedback on your stroke, working on technique, and building endurance (plus getting comfortable with swimming in open water and a wetsuit, assuming that's necessary for your race). If you're essentially a non-swimmer, or can't swim a few hundred meters continuously at any pace, then I'd suggest starting with a duathlon or maybe a shorter tri if you have the necessary swim skills by then.

For your safety and that of others, you really need to have a "cushion" of skills, confidence, and endurance for a tri swim. That is, be able to swim a bit longer than race distance (sometimes courses aren't accurate, swimmers navigate poorly and add distance to their swim, open water swims can be more tiring due to current, etc.). You should also be able to deal physically and mentally with not being able to breathe for several seconds if you are swimming in a crowd or pushed under by someone at the start, and comfortable with some level of physical contact in the water. It is also very helpful to have a "rescue stroke" (probably breaststroke or backstroke) that you can use if you panic or otherwise have difficulty in the race. Finally, you need to get into open water in the wetsuit you will use for the race, at least a few times.

Speaking from personal experience--I'm a strong swimmer and have been swimming since infancy, but panicked the first time I swam in open ocean. Ditto for first swim in a full wetsuit in cold water. It took several ocean swims for me to relax in that setting (most of my tris are ocean swims) and several goes with the wetsuit before I felt comfortable with it. Had either of those panic situations occurred in a race and been made worse by the crowding and adrenaline, I may well have been forced to drop out or needed rescue.