- Once you get going in the race,
having a race swim strategy.
I'm gonna miss arts and crafts time.
I mean, hot with like how good I look.
Trainiacs, as I mentioned yesterday,
we are officially out of places for me to sit
besides my desk here in the office.
Countdown is less than 150 hours
before we gotta be outta here.
Bye, bye brick background.
OT was filmed here, old-school Triathlon Taren.
Continuing on with yesterday's vlog
where I talked about how to warm up for a race
with that 10, 10, 10,
10 minutes bike, 10 minutes swim, 10 minutes run,
not necessarily in that order,
warmup to get you ready for a race.
Once you get going in the race,
having a race swim strategy
that's flexible enough
depending on what type of triathlete you are
and what type of swimmer you are is important.
This is a great angle, hey.
Aren't all Instagram selfies taken from this angle?
Yeah, it's a better angle.
Okay, so if you are a nervous swimmer,
it's one of your first races
or if you're just unsure of how to approach the swim,
what I'd recommend is that you take it easy.
I mention this a lot before.
If you let the pack go out
and you don't get mixed up
in the middle of that churn in the race,
you're probably gonna have a much quicker race.
Because if you go into that churn
and it makes you nervous
and you have to flip on your back
or you've gotta tread water,
you might lose a matter of minutes.
Let's say here's the churn and you go over to the side
and swim just a little bit longer route.
Or here's the churn and you come and stay back here
and wait for that churn to get out,
you might lose, who knows, maybe 10, 15 seconds
from that longer route or waiting a little bit,
but you're not gonna be losing immense amounts of time
by not progressing.
So if that's the type of swimmer you are,
for starters, get into a position
that you're not going to be knocked around.
You can develop into getting into that rubbings racing,
but certainly not for your first race
and certainly not if you're nervous in the swim.
Now let's say that you are a more confident swimmer
and you're looking to have a faster race
by having a faster swim.
Well in that case,
you wanna get right there in the middle
and mix it up with everyone.
Certainly do a bunch of drills in the pool or in open water,
with swimmers around you
and your fellow triathlon training partners.
Mixing it up and knocking each other around
and getting used to touching toes
and having your toes touched.
If you can stay confident with that and not feel nervous,
then, by all means, get into that pack,
but then once the pack goes out,
you wanna (claps) absolutely go
in the first 200 to 400 meters of a race
or until the first buoy happens.
Once that turn happens, at the first buoy,
the group is gonna end up stretching itself out
and it's kinda gonna seed itself.
So what you wanna do is you wanna go as hard as you can
for a little bit of time at the start
to get on people's tows who are faster swimmers than you are
and then, you'll be able to get a draft
that's faster than you should be going.
And instead of having to try to swim that fast,
which, ideally, you don't even have the ability to do,
but they do,
you get the benefit of their speed
and just stay in their draft
and not work nearly as hard.
What you have to do to get used to that, though,
is you've gotta be doing workouts in the pool
where you're going out really hard for 50 meters
or 100 meters, maybe even 200 meters
and then, without taking a break,
continuing to swim
and recovering while you're swimming easier,
so you can bring your heart rate down.
Really good stuff here, folks.
Up here, I will put a link to any sighting videos
that I've done.
Actually, there's one really good sighting video
that I did over at arts and crafts time over there.
I'm gonna miss arts and crafts time, maybe most.
But be aware to sight,
because going off course and losing those tows
is gonna slow you down.
And then when you do sight, kick a little bit extra
so that when your head is going up,
you're not driving your legs down.
Keep those legs nice and level in the water.
And then the last thing to do with the end of the race
also has to do with kicking.
In the last say 100 meters before you come ashore,
you shouldn't have been kicking too terribly hard
during the race,
because our legs are big muscle groups
and they take a lot of oxygen out of your body
to keep you breathing.
If you're gonna kick these really hard, I mean believe me,
these things are tree trunks
and they use up a ton of oxygen, a ton,
I don't know why I'm whispering this.
So you shouldn't have been kicking really hard
during the race,
but what that leads to is legs
that might not be as warmed up as your upper body
and you are about to use those legs as you stand up on shore
and run to transition one.
So in the last 100 meters of the swim,
make sure that you pick up the speed of your kick
just a little bit to kind of reawaken them.
And the last thing, I will link to a video that I did
up here that was probably around a month ago
where I talked about the differences
between pool swimming and open water swimming.
And if you aren't able to do a ton of open water swimming
leading into your race,
there are things that you can do practicing in the pool.
So, number one, check out that video
and then, number two, check out this video
where I talk about not just the differences
between pool swimming and open water swimming,
but how you can actually prepare for open water swimming
knowing those differences, while you're in a pool.
Wealth of knowledge,
really should be charging for this stuff.
By the way, if you wanna be charged for stuff,
go to triathlontaren.com/coaching.
We have awesome coaching plans, really good ones.
Oh, text from Coach Pat.
I am legitimately just a little bit afraid of this run.
It's not for dogs, this is not for most trainiacs.
I don't know if this is for this trainiac.
(beeps) Okay, wish me luck everyone.
(upbeat music)
Okay, that's a 20 minute warmup.
Now things are about to get real.
You're not gonna see me a lot for the next 5K.
(upbeat music)
(groans) That was some kind of mean
that Pat just did to me there, trainiacs.
I'm steaming, 7:00 a.m.,
8.2K done in 42 minutes, 54 seconds,
but that overall pace isn't the hard part,
it was the last 5K.
I'll explain.
I wish you guys could see the steam coming off of me.
I think it's just coming off my shoes because I ran so fast.
Okay, go over to Strava to give you
the officially official splits.
Cancel that, Garmin Connect
for the officially official splits.
So with the race coming up this Sunday,
we don't wanna necessarily tire me out
but we really wanna get my legs nice and snappy,
used to that race speed.
So what Pat had me do there was a 20 minute warmup
and in that 20 minutes, I went about 3K or so
and I did the strides, the drills,
all the loosening up to get ready for the smash fest
that was about to happen
after I finished that 20 minute workout.
Finished that 20 minute workout,
took off my shirt to look extra studly for the main set,
and then what the main set was was 5K,
because I'm doing an Olympic distance race,
10K, this weekend,
5K should be like easy peas,
but we wanna get my body into that race pace
and the hurt locker that I'm gonna experience at 10K
and yeah, pain.
That 5K is a descending set
and descending means that I'm getting faster,
so the first K at 4:45 per kilometer,
that's over my half Ironman pace.
My half Ironman goal pace is about 4:30,
so 4:45 per kilometer is easy.
So I actually did that first K in 4:44 pace
and then the idea is, with every kilometer,
we drop it by 15 seconds per kilometer.
So the first one was 4:44 in one kilometer,
then I did a 4:31 kilometer,
then it starts getting pretty fast,
because it's over the pace that I've been training at
for nine months.
So the third kilometer was 4:10,
the fourth kilometer, 3:55.
And then it got serious.
We finished with a final kilometer
at 3:40 per kilometer, that hurt.
It's like 13 degrees out and I'm perfectly comfortable
because I generated a ton of heat there.
I mean, hot with like how good I look, not heat heat.
I caught some looks from the neighborhood moms.
I caught 'em.
Alright trainiacs, I gotta go to the office
and tell you about swim strategy.
I think that's what we're gonna do.
But you already know that.
Alright, later.