What Does it Mean to be a Triathlete? - Coach Tip Tuesday

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 makes up triathlon and 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.

What is Multisport?

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 is a breakdown of the most common versions of multisport, including triathlon:

• Triathlon
  
  • Triathlon is a multisport discipline that consists of swimming, cycling, and running (in that order).
  • Triathlons can vary in length; the most common standardized distances are: 
    
    • Sprint (800-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike, 5-kilometer run)
    • Olympic (1,500-meter swim, 40-kilometer bike, 10-kilometer run)
    • Half (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, 13.1-mile run)
    • Full (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run)
• Winter Triathlon
  
  • Not to be confused with “regular” 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 snow conditions.
• Duathlon
  
  • 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; the most common standardized distances are: 
    
    • Sprint (5-kilometer run, 20-kilometer bike, 5-kilometer run) 
    • Olympic (10-kilometer run, 40-kilometer bike, 10-kilometer run)
• Aquabike
  
  • An Aquabike is a multisport event that consists of swimming and cycling.  
  • Aquabikes can vary in length, but often align with standardized distances in triathlon, such as:
    
    • Sprint (800-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike)
    • Olympic (1,500-meter swim, 40-kilometer bike)
    •  Half (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike)
• Aquathlon
  
  • 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 often align with standardized distances in triathlon, such as:
    
    • Sprint (800-meter swim, 5-kilometer run)
    • Olympic (1,500-meter swim, 10-kilometer run)
  • Aquathlons sometimes have three legs (i.e. running, swimming, and running).
• Alternative Formats
  
  • Some multisport races use other disciplines in place of the swim, bike, or run.
    
    • For instance, paddleboarding or canoeing is a popular substitute for the swim leg.
  • Alternative format multisport events can follow the structure of any of the other multisport events outlined above (a triathlon, a duathlon, an aquabike, or an aquathlon).

What is a Triathlon?

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: swimbikerun (not swim, pause, bike, pause, run); this 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 strings together.

Most new triathletes do not know how to treat triathlon as one sport with three disciplines.  Quite frankly, I’ve observed that many seasoned athletes do not know how to do this.  Too many athletes analyze their performance in a triathlon by breaking the race down into its individual parts, and analyze their swim, bike, and run separately.  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 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 biking legs of a triathlon.

But racing or completing a triathlon isn’t about how well you can swim, how well you can bike, or how well you can run.  Racing 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 the other.  Transition, the fourth discipline of any multisport event - including a triathlon - illustrates this.  The time it takes to transition from swimming to biking and from biking to running is counted toward a triathlete’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 fast they move through Transition.  It’s about how well they execute all four of these elements together.

To give a good understanding of just how different a triathlon is from any stand-alone race of one of its disciplines: The oxygen cost of running in a triathlon is 7-8% higher than it is in a stand-alone running race.  So even if some athletes struggle to intellectually accept the reality that triathlon is an entirely different sport from swimming, cycling, or running, our body (as always) knows the difference.  It physiologically costs us more to bike and run in a triathlon than it does to bike or run in a stand-alone cycling or running event.

How to Train for a Triathlon

All distances of triathlon - Sprint, Olympic, Half, and Full - require an aerobic engine and 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 and storage at the cellular level; glycolysis can be conducted aerobically or anaerobically.  (Glucose is a simple sugar that serves as the primary source of energy in the body’s cells.)  Working aerobically means that the body’s cells are conducting glycolysis and generating energy from glucose in the presence of oxygen.  Working anaerobically means that the body’s 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’s cells start to produce lactate (a by-product 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 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 (this is when we can “feel the burn”).  Because we get fatigued, we need to slow down (which 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 this is that working aerobically - aka using oxygen to generate energy in the body - is a much more sustainable process for the body and enables the body to function for a long period of time without fatiguing.  Thus, 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.  Furthermore, there is cross-pollination from one discipline to another, meaning 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’re 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 running.  

How to Plan Workouts When Training for a Triathlon

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 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.  Or, someone who enjoys running more than swimming or cycling may run more than is prudent when 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.  They 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.

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 (two swims, two bikes, and two runs) in addition to 1-2 functional strength training workouts each week.  If athletes have the time or the need to do more workouts, I often recommend adding an additional cycling workout 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, especially running.

Common Triathlon Training Mistakes

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 they are biking 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 itself.  Quite frankly, many of these athletes might be right about that.  But what they are neglecting to acknowledge is that swimming promotes arm fitness.  So when they don’t spend time in training 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.  Because these athletes used their arms in a way that they hadn’t trained to, they head into the bike leg of a triathlon with fatigue in their arms and more overall fatigue than is prudent, which impacts their ability to sustain their bike fit and impacts their overall bike performance.  And that, in turn, impacts their performance on the run.  In short, a lack of sufficient swim training adversely impacts an athlete’s performance in a triathlon.

Specificity matters, always.  If you don’t train to the specificity that you will be encountering on race day, it will cost you.  Not might.  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 or even if you aren’t as strong in one of the disciplines as you are in another, you need to thoughtfully balance the specificity of the demand that you will be encountering on race day and you need to plan your training accordingly.

Running is the most corrosive discipline in triathlon and it carries the highest injury risk.  Triathletes who run too much relative to how much they are training their swim and 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 haven’t 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 outlined: 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 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.

That being said, the balance I’m referring to 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.  Thus, a good, balanced triathlon training plan does include more training time on the bike than on the swim and the run.  No matter the length of the triathlon, the bike leg represents 77-80% of the race’s total distance and also represents the longest segment of the race time-wise for athletes, accounting for approximately 50% of an athlete’s total race time.  An athlete’s training should reflect this 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.

How to Race a Triathlon

Successfully racing a triathlon requires many of the same things that successfully racing a stand-alone swimming, cycling, or running race does.  Chief among these is patience.  The most common racing mistake I observe athletes making - by far - is going too fast or too hard too soon in the race (and to this is true no matter which endurance sport they are racing).  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.  Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if you had the best swim time or the best bike time or your best swim time or your best bike time if you end up needing to walk the entire run.  And it doesn’t matter if you’re a very strong runner if you’re underprepared for the swim or the bike and miss the time cutoffs that enable you to get to and begin the run.

If you take nothing else away from this article, remember this: the swim and the bike are partial efforts in a triathlon, not maximal efforts.  Even the run, which is when I would argue that the race really begins, is mostly a partial effort until the middle-to-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 efforts early on and for much of the triathlon.

A helpful way 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 2-3 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 1-4 hours (depending on the length of the 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 and in the legs that follow.  So the swim isn’t just about the swim, it’s about the bike and the run.  The bike isn’t about just 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-end of the run, when (if you’ve managed your efforts throughout the swim, Transition 1, the bike, and Transition 2 well) you should be able to access an extra “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, 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 result 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.

The Bottom Line

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 throughout all of their training and in their race day strategy and plan.