Why is the swim so short (Page 2)

That would be awesome The swim is way too short

Equilateral triathlon would require a 12km swim for IM distance. That would sort the men from the boys.

And, ahem, the women from the men! Yanti would rock. As a strong swimmer and runner but mediocre biker, I'd be the first to sign up for an "even up" tri, but maybe not an IM! I'm thinking an IM distance swim, 40 km bike, 15 km or 10 mile run would suit me nicely. All should take me in the neighborhood of 1:10 to 1:15ish on a good day. None of those are too ridiculous or unheard of in existing events.

Reasons of tradition aside (which are mainly relevant to the iron distance races, which are indeed based on distances of events on Oahu), my guess is mainly reasons of safety, crowd pleasing, and logistics. The swim is probably the most difficult to monitor and risky, safety wise, so having people out there for hours, esp. most age-groupers, would increase risk and liability dramatically and decrease participation, esp. by beginners. It's also, I'm sure, the most boring for spectators to watch (in elite events). You'd have to be a family member, coach, or true fan to be able to recognize your favorite athlete on the swim, at least anywhere but the start and the exit.

Haha you guys are crazy if you think you're going to spend that kinda time in the water

It would be kinda boring, but I have done and could do a 10K swim. The way a lot of triathletes swim, my mediocre bike speed might no longer be an issue. Of course, I'd probably need to eat a large pizza in T1!

The swim is very much neglected and the standard of swimming in triathlon is pretty poor to be honest. I think in full Iron man events, they definitely need to increase the distance.

An EQUALIZER sounds great! I think it's doable for shorter distances; like using an Oly swim with 12 mile bike and 5K.

If you try to take it out to HIM times then you would be talking about 3 mile swims and I don't think there would be a lot of people running to sign up for it.

You could always make the distances about what an elite, stand alone athlete could do in about an hour (or scale for whatever total length you would like); so:

5000m swim
50km bike
21km run

IMO there are two main issues with this line of thinking; first, a 5000m swim is going to scare away many triathletes even if the 50km bike and 21km seem doable. Even if you make a sprint event (let's say one where each leg takes an elite stand alone athlete 15 minutes to finish) you could be looking at:

1500m swim
15km bike
6km run

The bike and run are accessible to many but for a novice, the 1500m swim is going to seem very daunting.

The other issue is how much time can be lost in each event; if we look at it from that point of view, the Olympic distance holds up very well (not so great for 70.3 and IM):

Elite - 1:42 (transitions included)
Swim - 17
Bike - 55
Run - 30

AG 1 - 1:55
Swim - 20 (+3)
Bike - 60 (+5)
Run - 35 (+5)

AG 2 - 2:10
Swim - 23 (+6)
Bike - 66 (+11)
Run - 41 (+11)

AG 3 - 2:40
Swim - 30 (+13)
Bike - 80 (+25)
Run - 50 (+20)

AG 4 - 3:10
Swim - 40 (+23)
Bike - 90 (+45)
Run - 60 (+30)

So while the swim is certainly the shortest leg of an Olympic distance race, the time losses for the swim are comparable to the other legs so it would seem that these distances are already pretty much balanced so if one wanted a balanced long or ultra distance event, then the ITU 2xOly or 3xOly seem like a reasonable way to accomplish that goal.

Obviously there are many different ways to get the AG times I have above but I just grabbed some times from a random race for some AG performances compared to an elite performance on the same course. This is a drafting event for the elites so the time gap on the bike would actually be a little smaller than what the numbers show but still pretty reasonable IMO.

Shane

Hotrunner beat me to it:

I agree w/ her that the swim is shorter mainly because of safety reasons. It's way harder to monitor than the bike or road. A longer swim leg would result in a lot of heart attacks......mainly Race Directors keeling over from the stress of waiting for the last swimmer out of the water.

I'm a fan of the EQUALIZER philosophy too, btw. At least make the swim a little more proportional.

The ITU Rules go up to 4000m swim and allow a maximum time in the water of 2:15 - I suspect that it is probably just related to the fact that they don't want to extend the maximum time in the water by adding another 500m (about another 15 minutes for a 2:15 swimmer).

Shane

As I recall (although it's been a while since I've had the conversation) the ITU limits for time in the water, water temperature and air temperature were all based on research into hypothermia so I suspect that beyond 2:15, even in warmer water or with a wetsuit, the chances of an athlete developing hypothermia increase to the point that they are not willing to endorse that risk.

Shane

Probably wise. The caveat on my even-up tri statements is that water would have to be a very pleasant temperature! It would be a pretty narrow range where a swim of over 4000 would really be safe for most people- athletes have died of overheating in longer OWS in warm water, while slower swimmers could be in danger of hypothermia in water that was marginally not wetsuit legal in a longer event. I can't think of too many places that would dependably have those temp ranges.

X2 (for me at least)!

I think the best way to give experienced swimmers an advantage over bikers and runners is to put a shortcut at turnaround points in the swim. The full distance would require swimmers to go 200m around a buoy as part of the course. The shortcut would only be 100m. Think of an equilateral triangle.



The catch is, in order to take the shortcut, it must be completed doing a legal butterfly stroke!

So here's how I always thought of it and why I figured the distances are what they are (in an Olympic at least).

All three distances (1500 swim, 40k bike, 10k run) are kind of the longish distance standards of each discipline (longest swim in the pool at the olympics is 1500, the bike time trial is 40k, and the longest event on the track event is 10k). So I just thought that when they did the first one, they took those distances that are standards in each discipline and put them one right after another. I don't think that proportions were considered when they put them in a row...they just took those distances and ran them one right after the other.

I have no evidence to back that up. It just made sense to me...

This!

If its just the 100m short cut that has to be legal butterfly stroke count me in. While were at it, give everyone two short cut options, one 100m and the other 200m as long as that section is butterfly. I'm still in.

A couple of thoughts….

I think that the bike leg always has to be longer time since you have the aid of a mechanical device. Look at pro riders on a one day classic which is a 5 - 7 hour event compared to the running equivalent of a marathon which is a 2 hour race. You could probably extend that to swimming versus running as well since a 1 hour swim seems (to me at least) a lot harder than a 1 hour run. So effort wise it would make sense to have the bike be the longest time wise, the run second, and the swim third which fits in line with the current model.

It seems like the Olympic distance is actually the most generous to the swimming discipline, while the IM (half and full) is is far less proportional to the bike and run.

Olympic - 1.5, 40, 10
Double Olympic - 3, 80, 20 compared to a Half IM - 1.9, 90, 21
Quadruple Olympic - 6, 160, 40 compared to a full IM - 3.8, 180, 42

So as far as the best event for a strong swimmer it seems that the Olympic distance would be the best. I know, being a fair swimmer and much better at the run and bike , that I would always opt for a half IM distance since for just 0.4 extra km swim I get nearly double the distance on the bike and run.

Paul

Having a discussion on marathonswimming.org about swim vs. run. So far we've pretty much agreed that 10K swim = 26.2 mile run; 10 mile swim = 50 mile run; 20 mile swim = 100 mile run.....more or less. So if it were balanced out, IM swim should be about 10K

But then you are adding on A LOT of time to the race, it would be better to even out the 3, not add to the 3. IM is not an equal equation, that is part of the race. You are more then doubling the swim. I understand your point but IM is fine with 140.6 and will never change. Other races are looking outside the box TriSTar, Leadman, etc. Those are the races to look into, not extending IM.
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EDIT: You can make the distances more even time-wise, but the energy expenditure will be different still so is it really equal?

Edited by bcagle25 2014-04-10 9:44 AM