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Home > Articles > Triathlon is not Swim + Bike + Run - Part Three |
| Triathlon is not Swim + Bike + Run - Part Three |
Triathlon is not Swim + Bike + Run - Part Three
By: Sergio Borges
Please read part one and two
Looking at the great champions: Michael Phelps (swimmer), Fabian Cancellara (cyclist) and Haile Gebrselassie (runner) - all great athletes with many gold medals and World Championships under their belts. These athletes are very skilled and efficient in their specific sports. Obviously many years of training is necessary to reach the levels they have achieved. All three sports require a high level of skill, particularly swimming and running. Athletes like Michael Phelps, for example, have spent over 15 years developing their skills, training an average of 5 to 8 hours per day. All of this time and work is required to develop skills in A SINGLE SPORT!
Our sport includes all three: swim, bike, and run. Many athletes and some coaches see triathlon as three separate sports: Swim + Bike + Run. However, triathlon is ONE sport and should be seen as swimbikerun, in which every sport interferes or influences the others.
When training for triathlon, athletes usually make the mistake of seeing it as 3 different sports. Triathletes think that they should train for swimming like swimmers, bike like cyclists and run like runners. Athletes should not seek individual sports' PR's but instead, an overall faster result. Saving energy on the swim, reducing aerobic taxing and neuromuscular firing on the bike and teaching your body how to run on fatigued legs on tight muscles and reduced range of motion is triathlon!
Running in triathlon is totally different than pure road racing. In triathlon, with the swimming and cycling coming before the run, athletes have, in their legs, a limited range of motion that is caused by tight and overused muscles (the hip flexors, hamstrings, quads, etc). This limited range of motion will prevent you from bringing your legs as high during the recovery phase and from bringing your knee as high during the propulsion phase. Therefore, the stride length gets shorter and you'll run slower.
The efficiency in triathlon running comes from the ability of running fast on fatigued and tight legs. To be able to do this, you need to develop a running style that is more like a "shuffle running", where you'll focus on a higher turnover to overcome the shortening in your stride.
High cadence running becomes even more important during long distance races like the Ironman, in which the distance will add an extra level of fatigue on your legs, thereby reducing your stride length even more. By running with a lower stride rate, your second half of the marathon will be much slower or even turn to a walk.
A lot of practice is needed to develop a high stride rate running style as your body at first is not used to the new neuromuscular pattern of firing your muscles so quickly. Also running at a high stride rate will increase your heart rate and aerobic taxing so this running style would work better if you have saved these components on the bike. Now you can appreciate the benefits of riding at lower cadence on the bike as explained in Part Two of my series of articles.
Swim: Focus on developing strength in the water. The more you train this way, the more prepared you'll be to race fast in open water swims.
Bike: Low cadence cycling means lower heart rate and higher efficiency. Practice big gear riding to get you ready for race day.
Run: High stride rate running leads to less fatigued legs and more efficient triathlon running.
Train smart, Race fast!
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