- Morning, Trainiacs.
Settling in for a long haul today.
We got kickboard, we got the workout,
we got swim bag, we got more gear in the bag,
because this is like an epic journey of a swim.
4400 yards, a 3900 yard main set with 2700 of it
at or above race pace.
So, in the couple weeks leading up to
Half Ironman Puerto Rico, a lot of people
were seeing the swims I was doing, asking,
"Why are you going so long for just a Half Ironman?"
Well, it's so I can have the best swim of my life
at Puerto Rico, going 31 mid, probably a 10% improvement
from last year.
So, once I hopefully get through this epic saga,
we'll go back to the Pain Cave and analyze that swim
and how I swam leading into Half Ironman Puerto Rico
to be able to go 31 mid, no wetsuit.
Just about 100 more of these.
(energetic music)
(groovy electronic music)
Ay, caramba.
First swim back since Puerto Rico.
4400 yards, averaging a minute 32 per hundred yards.
I'm gonna be honest with ya,
there was a lot of cramping in that swim.
Lots of cramping.
Apparently though, it's what's gonna make me better.
Let's hope.
All right Trainiacs, let's start talking about that
31 mid swim that I did in Half Ironman Puerto Rico.
I've talked about the run, I've talked about the bike,
but I haven't really talked about the swim.
So, I went 31:40 in Puerto Rico,
but it was a non-wetsuit swim,
it was slightly into current.
So it's hard to really figure out
if it was a very good swim.
But I think I've got some answers,
and the guidelines of what I did to get this swim,
and free stuff for you.
So, this is our pal Kristoff's website at obstri.com,
obsessedtriathlete.com, where you can look up
any old race that you've done all in one spot
with some interesting analytics,
as long as it's an Ironman race.
So, starting with the oldest race
to the most recent race, Half Ironman Campeche
two years ago was a non-wetsuit swim where I swam 34:39.
Half Ironman Austin was a wetsuit swim where I swam 31:39.
Half Ironman Coeur d'Alene last year
was a wetsuit swim where I swam 32:06.
Half Ironman World Championship last year
was a wetsuit swim where I swam 28:59.
And Puerto Rico, what we're talking about here today,
was a non-wetsuit swim, swimming 31:40,
which comparing it to the most recent non-wetsuit swim,
you can see, basically, three minutes bang-on faster.
What I wanna look at isn't everything,
because I know I've got faster over the last year.
I wanna look at, basically my most recent race
with the previous most recent race
being Half Ironman World's.
Now, in that case, I'm trying to compare a wetsuit swim
to a non-wetsuit swim.
How much faster does a wetsuit make you?
(claps)
It's really different for everyone.
I know personally, myself, with floatie pants,
I am five to 10 seconds faster per 100 meters
with the floatie pants than I am without.
Now, on the low end, that means that I'm about
a minute and a half faster
over the course of 1900 meter swim in a Half Ironman.
On the high end, that means three minutes faster
over the course of a Half Ironman swim.
So take the average of that, we're gonna be somewhere around
two minutes, 15 seconds slower.
Subtract that two minutes, 15 seconds from what I swam
in Puerto Rico, and we're looking at normalizing it
similar to Half Ironman World's, to like, a, quick math,
Canadian math, a 29:25.
Still slower by about 26 seconds.
There's a couple other factors that lead to this
Puerto Rico swim being actually better,
even though it's like, in theory, slower.
One being that the water was cooler in South Africa.
So it being cooler, you can go faster
without really your body temperature heating up.
Second, Gerry Rodrigues, head coach of Tower 26,
looked across the entire field
and he said that in Half Ironman World's last year,
the entire field was about 3% to 5% faster.
He didn't say the same thing about Puerto Rico.
The ability to draft was also quite a bit less
in Puerto Rico, because instead of the 468 athletes
that were going off in my age group that I had in World's,
there were only 180 athletes that I had in this age group.
So there's just less chance to get into
a good drafting pack.
And then the last thing, and this is the biggest thing,
is that it's really hard to compare courses.
World's was an ocean swim, this was a lagoon swim.
Distances are slightly different.
A lot of people will see on Stava
that my Garmin actually lost connection
as we went under the bridge in Puerto Rico,
so it shows as just 1700 meters.
But looking at a buddy's Strava data,
Justin, from ROKA, hint, stick around for some cool info
on ROKA, Justin's data was bang-on 1900 meters.
And courses are different, all around.
And one of the biggest things that Justin said
is that he noticed that we were into a head current
as we turned around and started coming back
for basically, 60% of the swim.
Where as, in Half Ironman World's, it was current-assisted.
So all of those things lead me to say
that this was a better swim.
It was non-wetsuit, it was not current-assisted,
I did not have as many people to draft with,
it was warmer water.
When you start normalizing all that,
I have to say that this is probably
the best Half Ironman swim that I've ever done.
And that makes sense, because when I did a video
analyzing my entire year of progression in swimming,
I'm swimming faster now than I ever have.
How did I do that?
Well, everyone knows that I do Tower 26 for my swimming.
What was it about Tower 26 though,
that allowed me to get faster?
Well, over the course of the winter,
we take a step back in Tower 26
and we start working on technique.
Instead of just swimming for the sake of swimming
or just swimming really hard all year round,
we step back and we swim with purpose.
And the big thing that we worked on, in my case,
was narrowing up my kick, getting my heels
close to the surface of the water,
wiggling a little bit less, and having a better catch.
I mean, it's a lot of things,
but it was a fairly simple process to go through.
From September to December, I swam four times a week,
only amounting to about two to two and a half kilometers
per swim.
From January to February, I swam four times a week
with one of those being about three and a half kilometers
or longer, and the rest of those swims
being somewhere in between about 1700 meters
and 2.5 kilometers.
Then in March, I switched to three swims a week
with two of them being four kilometers or longer
and one just being two K.
Now, the key takeaway for you with all this,
is that to get faster, you need to swim,
but you need to swim, more importantly, with purpose.
So, I had somebody recently contact me on Instagram
and say, "Can I get a swim analysis from you?"
We do swim analyses for Team Trainiac,
with athletes that are on teamtrainiac.com,
but the reason that I said to this athlete,
"Well, I won't do it unless you're on Team Trainiac,"
is because, just doing a swim analysis and saying,
"Uh, well, you need to rotate more," just for example,
meanwhile, I have no say in the entire swim program.
That's like saying, "This 1% of the time
that I'm going to spend with you
is going to affect 99% of the time."
Whereas, what we do on Team Trainiac is,
if you get a swim drill analysis,
yeah, I can spend 1% of the time and say,
"All right, I know what you're doing for the other
99% of the time with all your workouts,
because I wrote all of them."
And you take what we talk about in here and apply it
to all those workouts, which, even if you don't do this 1%,
it's structured in a way that it's purposeful,
it gives you a period of time throughout the year
to work on certain things, and certain things
that are very high return on investment for triathletes.
Now, if you wanna skip all that, and you just say,
"Hey, Taren, I just wanna get fast right away."
Well, the easy way to do that is with our pals over at ROKA.
Get yourself some free speed by just shelling out some cash,
or trying to enter their wetsuit and Ironman race entry
and floatie pants and sunglasses giveaway,
where they are giving away, with us,
over $2000 in prizes.
Go to roka.com/taren.
At very least, if it doesn't make you faster,
you'll look better.
And if you look better, you're probably gonna go faster.
These are facts.
All right, Trainiacs, check it out, roka.com/taren
or teamtrainiac.
You, too, can get faster.
You can see, I did not start out fast, but I'm getting fast.
Later, Trainiacs.