What Does it Mean to be a Triathlete?

What does it mean to be a triathlete?

Too many athletes misunderstand what it truly means to be a triathlete.  A triathlon is a single sport with three disciplines, not three individual sports strung together.  In order to successfully train for and race in triathlons, athletes need to understand and embrace this important distinction and apply it in their planning for their training and racing.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:17 What Does it Actually Mean to be a Triathlete?
• 1:10 What is Multisport?
• 4:37 What is a Triathlon?
• 8:30 How to Train for a Triathlon
• 12:03 How to Plan Workouts When Training for a Triathlon
• 14:13 Common Triathlon Training Mistakes
• 19:32 How to Race a Triathlon
• 24:06 The Bottom Line
• 24:52 Closing

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. Triathlon, a sport that combines swimming, cycling, and running into a single event.

Over the years, I've coached hundreds of triathletes, and I've also finished a fair number of triathlons myself. It's unusual for any triathlete to have their athletic origins in the sport of triathlon. Most triathletes dip their toes into the endurance sports world via one of the three disciplines that make up triathlon, and they start their athletic journey as either a swimmer, a cyclist, or a runner.

Both because triathlon is seemingly made up of three different sports, and because athletes tend to come into triathlon from a single sport, it's extremely common for athletes to misunderstand what it actually means to be a triathlete. To understand what it means to be a triathlete, we need to first understand that triathlon is a form of multisport. Multisport is a sport that has multiple disciplines combined into a single event.

It is not one event made up of multiple sports. And this distinction is important. Triathlon is the most well-known and popular version of multisport, but it is just one variation of multisport.

Here are a few common versions of multisport, including triathlon. Triathlon is a multisport discipline that consists of swimming, cycling, and running in that order. Triathlons can vary in length, and the most common standardized distances are sprint, which is an 800-meter swim, a 20-kilometer bike, followed by a 5-kilometer run.

Olympic, which is a 1,500-meter swim, a 40-kilometer bike, and a 10-kilometer run. A half, which is a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run. And a full, which is a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run.

Not to be confused with regular, quote-unquote, triathlon. Winter triathlon is more like a cousin to triathlon and is a multisport discipline that consists of running or snowshoeing, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing all on snow. The lengths and distances of the individual legs of a winter triathlon, and therefore the overall distance of a winter triathlon, varies depending on the course and on the snow conditions.

Very important. A duathlon is a multisport discipline that consists of running and cycling. Most often, duathlons are composed of three legs, running, cycling, and running, in that order.

Duathlons can vary in length, but the most common standardized distances are sprint, which is a 5K run, a 20-kilometer bike, and a 5-kilometer run, and Olympic, which is a 10-kilometer run, a 40-kilometer bike, and a 5-kilometer run. An aqua bike is a multisport event that consists of swimming and cycling. Aqua bikes can vary in length, but they often align with the standardized distances in triathlon, such as a sprint, 800-meter swim, and a 20-kilometer bike, Olympic, 1,500-meter swim, and a 40-kilometer bike, and half, 1.2-mile swim, and a 56-mile bike.

An aquathlon is a multisport event that consists of swimming and running. This is probably the least common and therefore the least well-known multisport event. Aquathlons can vary in length, but they often align with standardized distances in triathlon, such as sprint, 800-meter swim, and a 5-kilometer run, and Olympic, a 1,500-meter swim, and a 10-kilometer run.

Aquathlons sometimes have three legs. So for instance, you might run, swim, and then run, or you might just swim and run. There are a lot of alternative formats of multisport as well, and some multisport races use other disciplines in place of the swim, the bike, or the run.

For instance, paddleboarding or canoeing is a really popular substitute for the swim leg of a triathlon. Alternative format multisport events can follow the structure of any of the other multisport events that I've just outlined. So a triathlon, a duathlon, an aqua bike, or an aquathlon.

So a triathlon is a swim, bike, run. It is not a swim, followed by a bike, followed by a run. Imagine that you're saying it all as one word, swim, bike, run.

Not swim, pause, bike, pause, run, pause. This saying it as swim, bike, run, illustrates the connected nature of a triathlon. The parts of a triathlon, swim, bike, run, do add up to a whole, but triathlon is about the totality of everything, not each discipline individually.

Triathlon is one sport with three disciplines, not three different sports that one just strings together. Most new triathletes do not know how to treat triathlon as one sport with three disciplines. And quite frankly, I've observed that many seasoned athletes do not know how to do this either.

Too many athletes analyze their performance in a triathlon by breaking the race down into its individual parts, and they analyze their swim, their bike, and their runs separately from each other. Athletes who come from single sport backgrounds, who are proud of their single sport performance, or who have an ego about their time splits in their single sport are especially prone to this because they often want to maintain their speed and proficiency in their primary sport within a triathlon. So for instance, someone who comes from a running background is proud of their running performance or who has an ego about their running paces may want to see those same times and performances when they run in a triathlon and or they may judge their triathlon performance based on their run time.

An athlete who comes from a swimming or cycling background may be prone to the same thing in either the swimming legs or the biking legs of a triathlon. But racing in or completing a triathlon isn't about how well you can swim, how well you can bike, or how well you can run. Racing in or completing a triathlon is about demonstrating how well you can bike after swimming, how well you can run after swimming and biking, and how well you can transition between each of these parts.

No part of a triathlon is isolated from any other. Transition, the fourth discipline of any multi-sport event, including a triathlon, illustrates this. The time that it takes to transition from swimming to biking and from biking to running is counted towards an athlete's overall race time.

How athletes are scored and ranked is a measure of all of the components of a triathlon and how they add up to a whole. Athletes are not timed, scored, or ranked based only on their swim performance, only on their bike performance, only on their run performance, or only on how well or fast they move through transition. It's about how well and fast they execute all four of these elements together.

To give a good understanding of just how different a triathlon is from any standalone race of any one of its disciplines, hear me out. The oxygen cost of running in a triathlon is 7% to 8% higher than it is in a standalone running race. So even if some athletes struggle to intellectually accept in reality that a triathlon is entirely different from swimming, cycling, or running, our body, as always, folks, knows the difference.

It physiologically costs us more to bike and run in a triathlon than it does to bike or run in a standalone cycling or running event. All distances of triathlon, sprint, Olympic, half, and full require an aerobic engine and a base. An aerobic base refers to the body's ability to effectively use oxygen to generate energy.

Cells in the human body generate energy via a process called glycolysis. Glycolysis is a metabolic pathway and cellular process that converts glucose molecules into energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate or ATP for use in storage at the cellular level. Glycolysis can be conducted aerobically or anaerobically.

Glucose is a simple sugar that serves as a primary source of energy in the body cells. Working aerobically means that the body cells are conducting glycolysis and generating energy from glucose in the presence of oxygen. Working anaerobically means that the body cells are conducting glycolysis and generating energy from glucose without oxygen being present.

Aerobic glycolysis is more sustainable than anaerobic glycolysis because of the presence of oxygen. Without the presence of oxygen, the body cells start to produce lactate, which is a byproduct of both aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis at a rate faster than the body's cells can consume it. On a related note, the body produces lactate, not lactic acid, and there is no such thing as lactic acid in the human body.

This is an inaccurate and outdated term and an outdated way to reference this process. This point, when we produce lactate faster than we can metabolize or consume it, is called lactate threshold. And when this point is reached, we fatigue very quickly.

And this is when we can quote unquote feel the burn in our workouts. Because we get fatigued, we need to slow down, which then switches us back to aerobic glycolysis in order to keep moving and to keep going. This may sound like a complicated process, and it is.

But the short version of all of what I just said is that working aerobically, aka using oxygen to generate energy in the body, is a much more sustainable process for the body and it enables the body to function for a long time without fatiguing. So in a practical sense, an aerobic base refers to the foundational level of fitness one must have to perform activities, such as swimming, biking, and running, for long periods of time at lower intensities without premature fatigue setting in. Aerobic capacity, which refers to your body's ability to take in and process oxygen and how well it does that, is trainable in all three disciplines of triathlon.

Additionally, there's cross-pollination from one discipline to another. And this means that when you train one discipline, you'll be able to leverage some of those physiological gains in another discipline. So for instance, when you are completing swimming workouts, you are not only training for the swimming leg of a triathlon.

Some of the physiological benefits from your swim training will carry over to your cycling and to your running. And this is true for all disciplines. So what you do in cycling will also carry over to your running and to your swimming too.

When considering what their training looks like, many athletes who don't embrace the mindset that triathlon is one sport with three disciplines will slot in different workouts of different types during their training week, where they can fit them into their life schedule without proper consideration for strategy. They will also let their schedule and personal preferences dictate how much and how many workouts of each discipline that they are doing. For instance, someone who finds it challenging to get to the pool may not swim as much as they should be swimming, or someone who enjoys running more than they enjoy swimming or cycling may run more than is prudent when they're training for a triathlon.

In contrast, athletes who do embrace the mindset that triathlon is a single sport with three disciplines use more strategy when planning their workouts and their training, especially if they are concerned with their performance on race day, or if they have set time-based goals for race day. Basically athletes who embrace this strategy work backwards from what they need to be doing to achieve their triathlon goals. And they use that information to plan which workouts they should be doing, including how many workouts of each discipline and how much total volume they are doing in each discipline each week.

When you train for a triathlon, you want to build your aerobic base and capacity early on in your training. As you get closer to race day, your workouts in each discipline should start to become more specific to the demand that you will be experiencing, imposing, and desiring on race day. Generally speaking, it's a good practice to plan to do at least two workouts of each discipline per week.

So two swims, two bikes, and two runs, in addition to one to two functional strength training workouts each week. If athletes have the time or they need to be doing more workouts, I often recommend adding additional cycling workouts first. Since the bike leg is the largest part of a triathlon and since cycling has a high cross pollination effect to the other disciplines and especially to running.

Over the years, I've both made and seen my fair share of triathlon training mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes I see is athletes who run too much relative to how much biking they are doing and who don't swim much at all. One of the most common reasons I've heard for this is that these athletes do not think that time spent swimming will improve the time of their swim leg in a triathlon.

And quite frankly, many of these athletes might be right about that, but what they are neglecting to acknowledge is that swimming promotes arm fitness. This is really specific. We don't get this in biking and we don't get this in running.

So when athletes don't spend time training in swimming, they don't gain that arm fitness. When race day comes, the swim leg of the triathlon disproportionately fatigues them due to their lack of arm fitness. And because these athletes use their arms in a way that they hadn't trained to, they then head into the bike leg of a triathlon with fatigue in their arms and more overall fatigue in their body than is prudent for them.

And this impacts their ability to sustain their bike fit and it impacts their overall bike performance. And then that in turn impacts their performance on the run, because this is a swim bike run. In short, a lack of sufficient swim training adversely impacts an athlete's performance in a triathlon, not just in the swim leg, but in the bike, in the run.

So the entire event specificity matters always. If you don't train to the specificity that you will be encountering on race day, it will cost you not, it might cost you. It will cost you.

Many athletes brush this aside and like to pretend that this isn't true for them, but that's not how training for endurance events works. Triathletes need to acknowledge and respect the specificity that comes with deciding to train for such an event. Even if you don't like one of the disciplines as much as you like another one, or even if you're not as strong in one of the disciplines as you are in another, or even if you don't have quote unquote time to train for one of the disciplines as much as the others, you need to thoughtfully balance the specificity of the demand that you will be encountering on race day.

And you really need to plan your training accordingly. Running is the most corrosive discipline in triathlon, and it carries the highest injury risk because of that triathletes who run too much relative to how much they are training their swim and their bike will increase their injury risk and impair their performance in a triathlon. You may be the strongest and fittest runner in the world, but if you have not sufficiently prepared for the swim and the bike, you will never be able to successfully leverage your full running fitness and run to your full potential in a triathlon because of the physiological cost of the swim and the bike that came before it.

If you want to have the best triathlon run that you can, you must sufficiently train and prepare for the swim and the bike in addition to the run. I've also observed athletes doing the opposite of what I just said, completely overthinking the swim and then swimming too much in training relative to how much time they are spending training, cycling, and running. This approach is also counterproductive while the swim is absolutely an important part of a triathlon.

It is not the only part of a triathlon. It's really important to strike the right balance of training time for all three disciplines and not to skew too heavily in favor of any single discipline relative to the demand of the event that you're training for. That being said, the balance I'm referring to does not mean, does not mean that you are spending equal amounts of time training for each of the disciplines.

Balance means spending the appropriate amount of time training for each discipline relative to the specificity and demand that you will encounter in the race. So a good balanced triathlon training plan does include more training time on the bike than it does for the swim and the run. No matter the length or distance of a triathlon, the bike leg represents 77 to 80% of the races total distance.

And it also represents the longest segment of the race time-wise for athletes. It accounts for approximately 50% of an athlete's total race time. So an athlete's training specificity and load should reflect that demand.

The longer a race is, the more blatant training related mistakes make themselves known on race day. While athletes may be able to get through a sprint triathlon without sufficiently training all three disciplines well, their performance in the entire triathlon, and especially in the run leg, will diminish as the race distance gets longer. This means that mistakes in training made by athletes preparing for half or full distance triathlons will be especially noticeable come race day.

Successfully racing a triathlon requires many of the same things that successfully racing a standalone swimming, cycling, or running race does. Chief among these is patience. The most common racing mistake that I have observed athletes making, by far folks, is going too fast or too hard too soon in the race.

And this is true no matter which endurance sport they are racing. Too much too soon is the most common mistake and it manifests in so many different ways. So additionally, as I alluded to earlier, specific to triathlon, I observe many athletes becoming overly preoccupied with their time splits for the individual legs of a triathlon.

And quite frankly, this might be an unpopular opinion. Well, not might, it probably is an unpopular opinion. It doesn't matter if you had the best swim time or the best bike time in the race or your best swim time or your best bike time, if you end up needing to walk the entire run leg.

And it doesn't matter if you're a very strong runner, if you're underprepared for the swim or the bike, and you miss the time cutoffs that enable you to get to and begin the run. If you take nothing else away from this episode, please, please remember this. The swim and the bike are partial efforts in a triathlon, not maximal efforts, partial efforts, not maximal.

Even the run, which is when I would argue that the race really begins is mostly a partial effort until the middle to the end of it. In order to have the energy necessary to push yourself at the end of a triathlon, you must be conservative with your pacing and your efforts early on. And for much of the triathlon, huge percentage of it, folks in practical terms, this means that you must go easier and or slower than you think or feel that you can go in all three legs in order to be able to successfully conserve enough energy to cover the entire distance of a triathlon race.

A helpful way that I found to understand this principle is this. When you finish the swim leg of a triathlon, you should feel energy wise. Like you could have kept swimming for at least two to three times the distance and time that you did.

When you get to the end of the bike leg in a triathlon, you should be able to continue riding at that same pace, effort, and or power for another one to four hours, depending on the length of your race. Essentially, you should be able to keep riding at the same effort, power, and or pace for at least the same amount of time that you intend to or need to now run each leg of a triathlon sets up what comes next, both within that leg itself and in the legs that follow it. So the swim is not just about the swim.

It's about the bike and the run. The bike is not just about the bike. It's about the run.

The run leg is the most like a single sport since there isn't anything that follows it, but even on the run, wisdom, restraint, and patience must be deployed in order to ensure that you can keep running at a sustainable, consistent effort for a majority of the run until the middle to the end of the run. When, if you've managed your efforts well through the swim transition one, the bike and transition two, you should be able to access an extra quote unquote final gear and kick up your effort toward the end of the race. If you start off any of the legs of a triathlon, including the run by going too hard or too fast, doing too much too soon.

There it is again, folks. You may get a time in one of the legs that pleases you, but you will fatigue prematurely and end up with a disappointing overall results for the entire triathlon. That being said, if you exert partial efforts throughout the entire triathlon, your pragmatism and patience will be rewarded with an overall performance that not only feels good, but likely ends with an overall time result for the entire race that you are satisfied and happy with.

Being a triathlete is not the same thing as being a swimmer, a cyclist, or a runner. Being a triathlete is something else entirely. It's perhaps deceptive and hard to understand since triathlon does include swimming, cycling, and running.

But the truth of the matter is that stringing all three of these disciplines together creates an entirely different sport, not three individual sports following each other. In order to successfully train for and race triathlons, athletes need to embrace this one sport, three disciplines mindset and apply it through all, all of their training and in their race day strategy and plan. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast.

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As always, we love to hear from you and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry.

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