I posted the triathlon results last night (see below). James left a comment on the entry, saying “It’s funny that Laurie’s run time was so good, but you still beat her by seven minutes. I guess swimmers always are favored in triathalons.” It was an interesting comment, so I thought about it for a minute.
But nah. It just looks that way because I didn’t show the whole story.
Triathlons don’t favor any particular discipline; they favor the person who can be nearly the best in all three. For reference, take a look at the breakdown for the top three finishers yesterday. The winner (1:05:23) was 23rd in the swim, 3rd in the bike, and 2nd in the run. Second place (1:06:22) was 15th, 2nd, and 7th. Third place (1:09:41) was 14th, 6th, and 10th. It’s all about having the best balance of very fast times.
Or, you can look at it this way, as Jen put it in an email: “If the swim takes ~15 minutes for a very good swimmer and the run takes about ~20 minutes for a very good runner, then the run is more important because it lasts longer. Therefore, someone who does 10% worse in the run will lose more time than the same in the swim.” That argument makes sense to me, and indicates by extension that the bike may actually be the most crucial part. The winners do the swim in 12-13 minutes, the bike in 31-33 minutes, and the run in 18-20 minutes.
You can be a great swimmer (like me) but if you can’t be competitive on the run, you won’t win; you can be a great runner (like Laurie), but if you can’t be competitive on the swim, you won’t win. Laurie beat me by 11.5 minutes on the run (25:00 as opposed to my sluggish 36:31), but I beat her by 12 minutes on the swim, 5+ minutes on the bike, and about 2 minutes in the transitions. I stayed ahead of her only because I’d built a lead in the first two disciplines. If the run had been longer (say, a 10K), she would have passed me. Even my advantage from the swim and bike wouldn’t have kept me ahead of her if she’d had more time to run.
That said, the swim does seem to be the portion that either makes or breaks the “casual” racers like me. Everyone knows how to run and learns how to ride a bike, but not everyone is taught how to swim. I also think that being in the water is scary to people who didn’t grow up around water; there is an element of unpredictability about it, especially when swimming in a open water where everything is murky, you can’t see the bottom, and have no black line to follow or use as a point of reference. The water makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think swimming is a skill that you have to learn and practice, just like riding a bike. The only difference is that going to swimming lessons isn’t as common as going out on the sidewalk with your dad so he can let go of the bike while you aren’t looking and thus teach you how to ride.
I’ve done three triathlons now, and at each one you see people who look more like they’re fighting the water than gliding through it. Of course, you also see people that look like they’ve never been on a bike before, or people (like me) who are barely shuffling along at a jog. But just as with biking and running, some people will be naturally good at swimming, and I think I’m in that lucky category of being somewhat of a natural swimmer…which, for the record, is only fair since I’m definitely not a natural runner!! 
In any case, the fact that the swim is my strongest discipline is a bit unusual.
It is the middle of the afternoon, I am wide awake (or, as wide awake as I generally get), and this message has served to confused me terribly. I like that about blogs. I think that people should always write stuff that makes me crazy. Thank you.
And to further back up the argument that the longest part (the bike) is most important, two out of the top three finishers did the best on the bike out of the three disciplines.
Very cool. I totally agree about the “casual” racers.
We shall see if you are ready for your 10K on July 4th! I most definitely am not!!!
i think i would probably be best at swimming too. that’s what we get for growing up in the pool.