Body type

If you want to know whether someone is going to be good at a new sport, take them to a big race and look around. Does their body type match that of the top competitors? If so, chances are they will be fine. If not, better make sure they have some other exceptional attributes to make up for the difference. Or maybe they should go after multi-sport, eg. triathlon.

Runners at the line

Usually, an even easier way to tell is to look at what the person likes as a child. Kids naturally gravitate towards what they are good at. Future athletes tend to stand out at a very young age. They can beat all their friends rather easily and with a huge margin. Occasionally one has to make an exception for speed of development. Some kids mature very quickly and can beat their age-matched peers by virtue of faster development.

These guys are not runners

These rapidly-developing children are the ones that stand out as distance or speed champions well before age 10. Theirs is not so much exceptional ability but rather exceptionally fast development. Their chances of becoming top athletes are not very different from the rest of the population, and once the rest catches up, most of the early birds disappear in the crowd.

Swimmers

So, if you look at kids, don't be tempted by those very young overachievers. Better look at a slightly later age. Phelps's coach claimed he saw the future star as early as age 11 and that makes a lot of sense. Great talent can be spotted early on.

Although there are notorious exceptions, nearly all top athletes in one discipline look alike. They are about the same height, the same weight, and of the same proportions. The latter includes relative length of arms, legs, versus torso, and may include other measures such as chest circumference, head size, shoe size, or hand size.

Body type determines how easy it is to reach things, how much weight you will have to lift, how much air or water resistance you will experience, and how much reach or stride you will have. Head size may influence resistance. Hand and foot size affect how much grip, paddle, or grasp you have.

The most notorious exceptions are people who are too tall or too big for their preferred discipline. Usually these athletes make up for their deficit by exceptional strength, power, or endurance. People like Miguel Indurain, Usain Bolt. They are best known because they don't fit the type. These are the special cases and they are far and few between.

Bike fit

I was reading John Cobb's blog the other day and lo and behold, the master himself was lamenting the fact that he could not find a good and comfortable bike position. The man who fitted Lance and hundreds if not thousands of others could not find his sweet spot on a bicycle. The wizard had trouble with his own magic. And that should tell you something.

I need to say that, years ago at CaliforniaMan, John gave me a free fitting session two days before the race. He was standing around idly and we got to talk about biking and before I knew it he volunteered to take a look at my position. I got a free Cobb fit, I could not believe my luck. Many travel half way around the world to meet with John. 

Many people have commented on John's intuitive sense and his deep insight and I have to admit that I became a believer in those sixty minutes we spent working out details. My position improved dramatically. Unfortunately, and this needs to be said as well, changing one's position two days before a race is not a good a thing. I paid for it by barely being able to run.

Therein lie all the lessons of a good fit. 

First, remember to make sure you are comfortable. Endurance races are long events and comfort is at a premium. Within limits of course, and a bike will never feel as comfy as a couch. But if you opt for a distinctly poor position you will not reap any benefits from it, no matter how aero or how otherwise "correct" that position is.

Second, never make abrupt changes, and especially never change things in the days before a race. Even if the changes make sense and are for the better. You do not want to race using a new position even if that position is orders of magnitude better than your current one. The same rule applies to all things new: don't race with new shoes, new cleats, etc. You don't need surprises on race day. 

Third, fit is a personal thing. Some people are easy to please while others are never happy. Even some pros never stop "fiddling" with their bike fits. Eddy Merckx for one, was famous for constantly checking and fine-tuning his position. It is doubtful that such changes make any real difference and more likely these behaviors are just one way of dealing with pre-race jitters.

Fourth, almost any bike that isn't way too small or way too big can be tuned for a proper fit. If in doubt, smaller is usually better. It is lighter and stiffer and positions you lower so there is less wind resistance. All these properties matter a lot.

Fifth, unless you are a pro or have money to burn, you don't need a custom frame. Your body is far more adaptable than frame builders would have you believe. Remember that performance in endurance events is not limited by muscle but by your cardiovascular system. Talk about better power or better leverage is of very limited value. What matters most is not to compress your chest by pushing your diaphragm all the way up and to stay as aero as you can be while preventing it. Often the best position is a compromise. Too aero may lead to too much power loss.

Last but not least, a good fit is one that feels comfortable and looks clean. If your buddies tell you you look awkward, it is worth taking a look at your fit. Especially when you are slow or working excessively hard. Remember however, that some people always look awkward and that many have idiosyncrasies that deviate from the accepted "norm" yet they perform at a very high level. If that is the case, chances are you will be better off to keep doing what you have been doing all along.

Happy fit!

Swimming

Swimming is often a frustrating sport for triathletes. It is an area where many spend a lot of time and money without seeing any real progress. According to Ed Neely, a swim coach, many triathletes cannot keep the swim in perspective. They devote way too much time to it. He recommends that if your swim is less than 10% of your total iron-distance race, you should only spend 10% of your training for the swim. If you swim slower, he says, spend only 15%. If the blogs are to be believed, that is not what most people do.

Ed points out that "the correlation between swim performance and overall race time is poor, which means your swim time does not have a big impact on your placing." The event is simply too short to have a material impact on the race. But it can make all the difference if you are vying for one of those coveted Hawaii spots. I am a poor swimmer and I regularly finish in the last 1/3 of the swim. Since I often finish in the roll-down spots, my slow swims have definitely kept me from going to the Big Island. Therefore, I fully understand the desire to "do something about it." Five minutes would make all the difference for me.

What further confuses people is all the attention paid to technique. Technique implies something you can learn to master. There is no doubt that technique makes a big difference in Olympic swimming events, esp. when reaching for the wall touch. But such things matter little in long open water swims.

Humans are incredibly slow swimmers and water is a really dense medium. Any small amount of excess resistance can really slow you down. What we really are talking about here is slow and slower so efficiency is key.

For all the talk about Michael Phelps setting "a blistering pace," and "sprinting to gold," few people realize that the average adult could out-walk him without too much effort. And that is for short events. The "long swims" in this category are about 1/4 mile. For any real distance, a "speed" of 2.75 mph is considered world class.

Over the past five years I have watched a lot of swimmers, and learned a lot about swimming. Here are some things I learned.

1. Body type is the most important attribute of a swimmer. It is something you are born with and there isn't much you can do about it. It helps if you are tall, have a long torso with relatively short legs, big feet, a small head, and a wide arm-span.

2. Lie. Body type is the number one determinant of how you lie in the water. The flatter and higher you are the better but despite all the recommendations about keeping your head down, and pushing on your chest, etc. , your build is key. Some people stay flat even when their head is up, while others hang down despite their best efforts.

3. Muscle. Swimmers benefit the most from weight lifting. The more muscle you can pack on your upper body the faster you will swim. There is little or no penalty for the excess weight -many swimmers are overweight by athletic endurance standards- and more muscle means more power. The upper body is less subjected to gravity so "specialized training" such as weight lifting helps more here. Some swimmers look like weight lifters or wrestlers.

4. Body sense. People with better body sense, i.e. people who "instinctively" know where their body is in space tend to do better. But it is hard to see what is cause and what is effect. Good dancers make better swimmers.

Corollary: if you can get objective feedback (from a mirror or video) it can help a lot. Observers are not nearly as good. Many can tell you that you are doing something wrong, but very few can put their finger on it, or tell you how to correct it.

Some triathlon/open water guidelines:

5. Wetsuits. Wetsuits help but not all that much. They help the better swimmers more than the poor swimmers. You can gain about 5 minutes on an iron-distance leg. You can lose almost as much if you can't get out of the wetsuit. Still, better to wear one to keep warm unless the water is tropical.

6. Draft. Drafting is legal in (triathlon) swimming and it helps a lot.

7. Stay calm. Many people panic in a mass start. Then they run out of breath.

8. Swim straight and swim the shortest line. This is the area where the most gains are possible. It is also what fools most people into believing they can swim faster. As they become more comfortable, athletes start closer to the best line and further ahead (where it is more crowded), hence they swim shorter, straighter and get a better draft.

Everything about swimming is slow so it should not surprise you that swimming is a sport where making progress is agonizingly slow too. The rule is that once you can easily swim an iron-distance, you will also know your best swim time for the event. I.e. your gains after that will be minimal, even if you spend inordinate amounts of time in the pool, or spend inordinate amounts of money on coaching. As a matter of fact most of your gains later on will come from unrelated sources. Better draft, less current, less wind, straighter swim, shorter course (yes it happens, the opposite happens too believe me!), etc. all matter a lot more than your actual swim prowess.