Swim Fitness Impact

The swim for triathletes usually comes from two perspectives:

1- I come from a swim background and it's my weapon.

2- It is just something I'm trying to survive so I can get on with my race.

Either way, the impact the swim has on the total race is commonly overlooked. If your swim fitness is low, the impact it has on the bike and run is HUGE! 

No matter your speed or experience level, if swim fitness is high, it allows you to access your bike and run that day. If you come out of the water and the impact is too high on you for your total day, then you aren't going to have the race you could. 

The swim is high stress. You want to have very high fitness level to handle the stress. Pace and digestion of calories on the bike and run are directly impacted by swim fitness.

Logging swim miles is about MORE than just improving swim times. A mistake I see is people getting frustrated with their swim ability, not seeing big changes in pace. So they swim less, with the attitude of "Why bother? I'll bike and run more." Then, when they go to race and they are dead on the bike and run because they couldn't handle the stress of a long swim under pressure, they are surprised.

You must train your body to handle the distance, the intensity and the stress of a race swim in order to access your bike and run!!