Moving to Triathlon

You'll probably be aware that I have toyed with triathlon and plan to continue to dabble.

In my January (already!) copy of 'Triathlon' magazine there is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses that athletes approaching from each of the three disciplines bring with them. This is a distillation of their view on the runner, with my added comments:-

Cardiovascular - VO2max highest of the three.

Thermoregulation - being light and lean, runners have the best thermoregulation. I'm not convinced by this conclusion; surely swimming in cold water or cycling in cold air and possibly rain, requires the athlete to be able to keep warm, rather than merely be able to shed heat.

Technique - if good, good. If poor, not good! Nothing very positive here then.

Calf Muscles - Should be good, but long term runners may have already 'squished' them with over-use - is this a technical term?

Upper Body Strength - Not good.

Flexibility - Not good and in particular the hunched position that many runners fall into doesn't lend itself to the slightly concave back recommended for freestyle swimming.

Perception - Runners perceive a greater level of discomfort compared with cyclists when exercising at submaximal workload. - I protest, they must not have taken fell runners into account!

Although from the above, it would seem that runners are not particularly suited to triathlon, the conclusion in the article is that swimmers carry too much upper body weight, have too little leg strength and, due to the non-impact nature of their specialism, too little resilience. Cyclists have little upper body strength and similar to the swimmers, too little resilience. So runners rule, OK!

Just another thought that I've always propounded, because the cycle tends to be the longest time duration in any triathlon, a cyclist who is 10% faster than a runner over the bike ride, who is 10% faster in his discipline, will gain more absolute time and will cross the line in front.

Perhaps the final decider will always be that it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.