For a 54-year old (that's me), which is more critical to limit the potential swim speed between flawed technique and unathletic strength?
Well, I'll actually try to improve both. However, many people around me mainly focus on swimming more laps and gym workout, while don't bother about improving their technique at all, despite their techniques being far from efficient.
Just because we're alway on the water, Mike, doesn't mean we all (sailors) can swim. Seriously though...to this day it baffles me when active duty sailors show up at the pool who can't swim to save their life. When I went to boot camp...you didn't get out of boot camp until you could swim. I did the Air Force bike-computer test once when I was stationed at an USAF installation. My score was off the chart. Literally. In the Navy 500yd swims for the PRT...my best ever was 6:02. Usually I was around 6:15-6:30. I always max'd out the test score with a perfect 300.
Dan
At one point there had been 19 deaths during triathlons (not awful considering how many triathlons there were). 18 had happened during the swimming portion of the events. So, yeah, you can lose big-time with the swimming.
Big OOOOPS!
As our president says "FAKE NEWS."
I just checked my numbers. There's a wikipedia page about this
en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_triathlon_fatalities
I did a very quick hand count - after sorting by event - and got 117 swimming deaths out of 164 total deaths. So 1) a lot more deaths than I reported. 2) A lot lower percentage from swimming. (Perhaps my earlier figures were about the Ironman race in Oahu,Hawaii, where they have, like, real waves.)
Still, swimming is the shortest event, and accounts for 71% of the deaths. It's dangerous. Still "lose big time."
