Body Builder - First time Triathlon

Welcome! You will see lots of different shapes and sizes in triathlon. I assure your I'm not the "ideal" physique. I'm 5'11" (ok 5'10.5") and 190lbs. Former rugby player. Training for triathlon has been a totally new adventure that I have loved and found a new kind of fitness. The most important thing is to find a good training plan or coach and have FUN! I promise good training will be much more important in achieving a good performance.

What distance are you talking about?

I would think it depends on how much emphasis you have on your time. Me, I just like being outside and having a focus. If my IM time 16 hours then I'm cool with that. If you're extremely competitive and will beat yourself up if you don't get an IM in under 10 hrs, well... first I'm not the guy to be advising you . But I think that yeah size, especially upper body, will have an effect. It won't stop you from finishing though. If I can finish anyone can. I'd imagine there's training/diet regimens that can help with special musculature situations.

Welcome. Glad to have you here.

The feedback you're hearing related to musculature/physique is probably because in triathlon competition we must each carry our weight around a race course. Extra muscle (weight) can have less of an impact on beginning swimmers because the water carries much of our weight. In theory, we float, right? Extra pounds bite more on the bike--our weight is carried on wheels--but we really feel it when we have to peddle those pounds up a hill. And on the run, extra weight absolutely kills run speed as every pound must be carried by your legs with energy produced by your aerobic engine. More weight, more energy required.

Any muscle mass which is not directly tied to producing swim, bike, run output is simply a big, heavy penalty box that we each get to lug around the race course as fast as we can.

There is a reason the most successful endurance athletes are lean. Each pound of excess weight is an anchor. The bigger the pounds the bigger the anchor. I read somewhere that every excess pound above ideal endurance race weight adds 20 seconds per mile on the run. I don't know if that's exactly true, but in my experience the concept is definitely on target.

That said, we're all out here for fun. Just go out, train and have fun. If "faster" evolves into a priority for you, then at some point you'll need to drop the weight workouts for longer endurance work to build your aerobic engine while burning calories...which over time will reduce the size of your body builder "musculature/physique" anchor.

Best of luck. Enjoy the journey and welcome to the sport!

Steve

Edited by lutzman 2018-08-17 3:27 PM

Depends on your goals. EVERY BODY type is out there getting it done.
We have a local guy that's 190, 6-2" pure muscle and he kills the full IM distance. Doesn't look like he should be that fast, but he is.

I think I read 2 seconds per mile. If it was 20 seconds per mile I would definitely force myself to lose 10 lbs. I would be running like a 2hr marathon. lol

My bad. You are correct. Meant to write "2" not "20." Thanks for the correction.