Which triathlon distance is the right distance for you?

I was supposed to get up at 5:15am this morning to do my weekly long run but decided to sleep in.  At about 5:30am, I realised it is just not going to happen. I could not fall asleep again so I decided make some coffee and do my weekly blog. Yip, one of my 2012 new year's resolutions is to blog at least once per week.

I recently thought of doing a quick analysis on a  % basis of the swim, bike and run components across the 5 most popular triathlon distance events which can be seen below.

A full list of the various triathlon distance events can be found on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triathlon

TRIATHLON DISTANCE ANALYSIS

If swimming is your strength


If you are a strong swimmer you would gain most advantage over your competition in the sprint and olympic distance events. The swim component comprises 2.91% of the event which is about 1% more than what it is in half or full ironman distance events.

Being a strong swimmer you could further increase your advantage over your fellow competitors by choosing triathlons which are likely to have non wetsuit swims. Wetsuits tend to give weaker swimmers more  of an advantage than strong swimmers as it corrects some of the buoyancy issues weaker swimmers typically experience.

Stronger swimmers also tend to open more of a gap over their fellow triathlete competitors in choppy to rough open water conditions which are non wetsuit swim events.

The bottom line is, if you are a strong swimmer you are likely to perform the best in relation to your competitors by competing in non wetsuit sprint or Olympic distance events where swim portion has choppy to rough open water conditions.

I learnt this lesson when I competed in the Ironman 70.3 Augusta, Georgia event in September 2010. This half ironman event is known to have one of the fastest swim courses on the half ironman circuit. The swim is basically a 1.2 mile downstream wetsuit legal swim in the Savannah river. Even though I placed 5th in my age group in this swim, the time I gained over the strong cyclists and runners was marginal as the current and wetsuit legal aspect of the swim propelled them downstream.

If biking is your strength

Looking at the table above it is evident that you are likely to gain more of an advantage over your competitors by competing in half or full Ironman distance events where the cycling component makes up nearly 80% of the event.

You could even put in more time between yourself and your competitors by choosing half and full Ironman distance events that has very hilly bike courses such as the Ironman 70.3 in East London, South Africa or Ironman Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.

If running is your strength (Then you are lucky)

Well, if you are one of the few triathletes who has been blessed with elite running talent then you are most probably already winning races or placing very high in your age group.

As can be seen from the table above, the running component remains fairly consistent over the 5 different race distances. You would have a slight advantage though by competing in the ITU Long distance triathlon event where running comprises 19.48% of the total race distance.

If  you are a strong runner and train in fairly hot and humid conditions you could even create a bigger gap between you and your fellow competitors by choosing triathlon events where it is likely to be very hot and humid during the running part of the event. Events like Ironman Louisville, Ironman St. George and Ironman Lanzarote would suit the strong runner that can cope with hot and humid conditions.

That is all for now, till next week.