Swim
I love swimming, it's my favourite part of a race, my preferred training session and how I like to relax. That doesn't mean I still can't have a bad swim session.
Many triathletes will tell you that this is the part they find most difficult as they usually come from one of the other disciplines where breathing isn't dependant on head position and the absence of water. The technicality of it is often cited as the reason behind this difficulty ... but I find balancing on a bike and running quite technical.
Whilst swimming you're always thinking about your head position, hip position, where your legs are, stroke count, stroke length, catch and pull, breathing, glide, push-off the wall, streamlining, how many lengths you have left, how close the competitor ahead of you is and whether or not to stay in position and try and overtake, the best point to start to overtake, is the competitor behind catching up and trying to overtake........
You can see the perspective of the other disciplines, it's not as easy as putting one foot in front of the other - at least you can stop at any point and not worry about drowning.
Like everything else you have to start somewhere and I've seen people compete in tris doing breast stroke so don't worry. Once you can swim front crawl (it took me almost 2 years) you're on your way to cracking this discipline. Even if you don't exactly master the technique you can battle your way through with brute force which sort of summed up my approach for about 4 years.
Many triathletes will tell you that this is the part they find most difficult as they usually come from one of the other disciplines where breathing isn't dependant on head position and the absence of water. The technicality of it is often cited as the reason behind this difficulty ... but I find balancing on a bike and running quite technical.
Whilst swimming you're always thinking about your head position, hip position, where your legs are, stroke count, stroke length, catch and pull, breathing, glide, push-off the wall, streamlining, how many lengths you have left, how close the competitor ahead of you is and whether or not to stay in position and try and overtake, the best point to start to overtake, is the competitor behind catching up and trying to overtake........
You can see the perspective of the other disciplines, it's not as easy as putting one foot in front of the other - at least you can stop at any point and not worry about drowning.
Like everything else you have to start somewhere and I've seen people compete in tris doing breast stroke so don't worry. Once you can swim front crawl (it took me almost 2 years) you're on your way to cracking this discipline. Even if you don't exactly master the technique you can battle your way through with brute force which sort of summed up my approach for about 4 years.