Are Triathletes worth the dues they pay toward Masters Swimming?
I say we force all Triathletes to spend one day a week in the sprint lane, one day a week doing stroke (i.e. IM) work, and then make them focus on their starts and turns.
This invasion needs to be controlled.... :-)
John Smith
:)
Parents
Former Member
"And the honest truth is that triathletes, while in terrific physical condition, by the very nature of their sport cannot compete with the top athletes in the other individual sports."
Many professional triathletes were tops in other individual sports.
Look at the Ironman swim times. 2.4 miles of openwater ocean swimming -under 47:00 and that's not even pushing it. They need to maintain some restraint in the water because after that they have to ride 112 miles and then run a marathon.
Several athletes averaged under a 5:20/mile pace in the run portion last year at the Escape from Alcatraz race (8 mile run), after riding 18 miles in hilly San Fran and swimming 1.5 miles from Alcatraz island across San Francisico Bay (which Simon Lessing did in under 21:00). Sub 5:00/mile would be possible without the swim/bike portion. Pretty elite for a hilly course.
Norman Stadler trained on the bike with T-Mobile last year.
Sheila Taormina has an Olympic medal for swimming in her trophy case.
I won't bore you with more examples because they are almost endless, especially when you compare age groupers'/non-pros' times in tri-events to times put up by age groupers/non pros in individual events (10k running races vs 10k times in an Olympic distance tri etc.). The time gaps between pro triathletes and pro individual sport athletes would be closer in each individual sport than if the individual athlete were to compete against the triathlete in a 3 sport event. Those of you who are name calling ("mediocre athletes") are dead wrong.
And every time we defend ourselves, stop calling us uptight. I understand these saements for the most part are in jest, but did you expect a bunch of competitive crazed people to just roll over?
"And the honest truth is that triathletes, while in terrific physical condition, by the very nature of their sport cannot compete with the top athletes in the other individual sports."
Many professional triathletes were tops in other individual sports.
Look at the Ironman swim times. 2.4 miles of openwater ocean swimming -under 47:00 and that's not even pushing it. They need to maintain some restraint in the water because after that they have to ride 112 miles and then run a marathon.
Several athletes averaged under a 5:20/mile pace in the run portion last year at the Escape from Alcatraz race (8 mile run), after riding 18 miles in hilly San Fran and swimming 1.5 miles from Alcatraz island across San Francisico Bay (which Simon Lessing did in under 21:00). Sub 5:00/mile would be possible without the swim/bike portion. Pretty elite for a hilly course.
Norman Stadler trained on the bike with T-Mobile last year.
Sheila Taormina has an Olympic medal for swimming in her trophy case.
I won't bore you with more examples because they are almost endless, especially when you compare age groupers'/non-pros' times in tri-events to times put up by age groupers/non pros in individual events (10k running races vs 10k times in an Olympic distance tri etc.). The time gaps between pro triathletes and pro individual sport athletes would be closer in each individual sport than if the individual athlete were to compete against the triathlete in a 3 sport event. Those of you who are name calling ("mediocre athletes") are dead wrong.
And every time we defend ourselves, stop calling us uptight. I understand these saements for the most part are in jest, but did you expect a bunch of competitive crazed people to just roll over?
