midlife_swimmer asks:
"What length tri's are you looking at and what is your previous time on the swims and your goal time. When you swim in a tri does it feel like a warm up or part of the workout to you."
My current "A" race is the Kansas City Triathlon on May 23, which is Olympic distance. That is, a 1500 meter swim (~.9 miles), a 40km bike (~24.9 miles) and 10km run (~6.2 miles). I also have another race coming up as kind of a "warm up" for that race. This weekend I'll be doing the Heritage Park Triathlon which is a 587 yd swim, 11.5 mile bike and 3 mile run.
Both swims are open water and my guess is...cold. Our morning temperatures have been in the high 40's low 50's for the past few weeks, so at least I have that to look forward to. At the Heritage Park Triathlon last year the water temperature was 58 degrees for the swim... it was actually warmer than the ambient temperature for the bike and run, which is kind of scary. Yeah, I feel a little stupid for doing races this early in the season in Kansas, but hey, what could go wrong? (besides hypothermia, drowning, frostbite...aghhh!)
As for my times, when I do distance work at "race pace" I average around a 1:25-1:30/100 yards. My last time trial was 15 minutes and I did 1050 yards - right at 1:25/100. If I'm doing repeat 100's for practice, I usually slow that down to 1:40/100 interval work or go about 75%-80% and take 15-20 seconds in between sets depending on the workout I'm doing.
I'd love to get my time down to 1:15/100 (or so) which would put me on pace to finish an Olympic tri swim in under 20 minutes.
So...does the swim feel like a warm-up or part of the workout? When I'm training it defintely feels like part of the workout. I'm a decent swimmer so improvement comes in small increments these days. I can shave one second per 100 off by increasing my kick cadence or upping my stroke count from 17-18 per 25 yards...stupid little stuff. The real improvements for me come from doing lots of laps and trying to keep myself breathless during practice. So definitely a workout.
During races, the swim is my best discipline so it's not so much part of the workout as the place I want to "try" to shine a bit. I know I'll get schooled on the bike and the run, but I can at least keep up during the swim. So is it a warm-up...nope...it's my favorite part of the race!
Thanks for the question midlife_swimmer! If you haven't checked out her amazing story, you should check out her blog!
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