Swim Seeding, Fast Cyclists, and Legal Drafting

Coach Rich

Team,

When preparing for my IM Boulder webinar yesterday I dropped into the athlete's guide for the race, went to the swim section to see they are using the SwimSmart/self-seeding protocol...but that self-seeding is recommended, not required. 

This got me thinking about an opportunity for a strong cyclist to be a little cagey: seeding near the back of the swim and setting yourself up for a massive legal drafting opportunity as you worked your way from draft to draft, with hundreds of cyclists in front of you. A few notes:

• Course-specific strategery, obviously, as the race needs to have a self-seeded swim start. But also, the terrain in the first 40-50 miles of the bike course are very important. For example, pretty sure I wouldn't want to be bombing down the IMLP descent (starts ~mile 7-8) dodging squirrels. But IMCDA has a very safe first >30 miles. Boulder seems similar?
• Intuitively, the 2-3mph speed you can gain by moving from draft to draft would more than make up for any friction you may have encountered in the swim, passing people...but I say that not having much experience of being, say, a 1:10 swimmer, starting with 1:30's and moving through that many people?
• Moving from draft to draft would be a very dynamic situation (pass, move back to the right to slip in behind the next person, draft again, repeat, etc) so you'd need to be very focus to maintain a steady effort. 
• FYI, it took them 15' to get ~2200 people in the water at CDA. Maybe someone smarter than me could estimate the benefits of coming out of the water with 1000-1500 cyclists in front of them and working your way up through 1300 of them? 

Anyway, just thinking out loud here and am sure there have been similar conversations in the tri space. But the fact that self-seeding isn't required opens up this race day strategy discussion, in my opinion. 

Al Truscott

Thinking out loud back at ya … OK, Let's say for ease of thinking the race starts @ 7:00. The "strong cyclist" is a 1:10 swimmer, and starts with the 1:30 swimmers. The 1:10 swimmers hit the water @ 7:05, thus getting out @ 8:15. The 1:30 swimmers start @ 7:10, and our strong cyclist gets out of the water @ 8:20 … five minutes worth of slower bikers in front of him (assuming everybody has the same T1 time - another variable which I'll ignore). So not 1300 people, more like 3-500 he might be able to draft off.

Second issue is … what is the downside of having to swim through all of the 1:11-1:30 swimmers - that may be close to half the field. A constant battle to avoid the flailers and zig zaggers, IMO. And/or going so far to the side of the pack that extra meters of swimming are required. Even with the Smart Start, the 1:20 swimmers are not the people Rich is accustomed to seeing around him when he's doing an IM.

Third … slower swimmers will tend to be slower bikers, I've noticed. and slower bikers (not many of them, but more than the faster bikers) will clump up as you've noticed on your moto - riding side by side, taking too long to pass, nmot understanding the rules, etc. To say nothing of the increased crowding art the aid stations.

In the past ten years I've gone from being a 1:05 swimmer to a 1:16 (or 1:20 in you count IM CDA last month). As I've watched the field around me change as I get slower, I would much rather take my chances with fewer, faster, *smarter* cyclists around me, trying to latch onto an ever so slightly faster one to ride 7 meters behind.

OTOH, remember Tom Glynn in, I think, 2011 IM TX? He swam 1:33 or something, with a 5:0X bike? His race report was entitled "On Your Left!" Got him to Kona that day. 

Coach Rich

Thanks. Yeah, just thinking out loud after thinking about it during 2 x 20' intervals up my local hill this morning :-) And Tom's experience would be a great test case for this.

MattAaronson

Historically I have actually not minded when my AG started in a late wave because I like passing people on the bike. In addition to "legal drafting", it keeps me interested and occupied. I suppose in an IM distance (which I have never done), you'd need to be really sure you weren't turning into "Ricky Racer" and getting too aggressive as you did all the passing.

I also think for really strong cyclists you end up not doing the "legal drafting" because you're blowing by people so fast and so often that you end up doing most of your ride in the left hand lane...that was what happened to me at Racine last weekend -- at 24-25mph I was probably going 5-8mph (20-25%) faster than most of the people I was passing and so spending any time behind them was impractical. I can imagine in an IM this would be a lot less of a problem because after you pass the people with whom you have a very large speed differential, there are still many miles remaining to pass the people with whom the speed differential is much narrower. So if you can get through the part Al is talking about (large clumps of people riding 3-abreast, etc), you might enjoy quite a good period of passing people only going 1-2mph slower, one-by-one, thereby getting some value from "legally drafting".

John Withrow

I did this exact thing you describe at IMNYC in 2012 and it was great. It was not "self-"seeded" at all. You simply got on a ferry to the start line and got in the water as a time-trial start. It took almost 30 mins from start to finish to get everyone in the water. My reason was different in that I knew the tidal river current would be stronger the later you waited. Because of the fast current and dramatically shortened swim times for all, I had almost 2,000 bikers ahead of me of all skill levels. This was a safe bike course with 95% of it on a closed highway. I did see plenty of 3 and 4 wide riders and occasionally on my first "out" I had to cross the double yellow just to not run people over. But with that said, I loved it! I played the game where you aim at their back wheel until you were about 2 inches behind them and then sling-shorted around them and immediately spotted the next wheel. I got about 3.5 hours worth of this fun until I had passed most of the files. I heard a podcast once that talked about this "legal draft" and they mentioned that you gain about 1 second for every person you pass. You also gain about a second for each person that passes you if you immediately pop behind them and take the full 15 seconds to fall back through the drop zone. My numbers were probably less than these as like Aaron said, I passed many of these people at more than 5mph faster than them, but every little bit counts.

Like Al suggested though! with this method! once you pass all of the slower riders, you do end up riding the last 2hrs or so completely alone... Because you'll never catch the fast-ish riders who are way ahead at his point. So which would you rather have, being 7m behind or in front of the same group of 4-5 really fast guys all day? Or... Blowing by a thousand or so people for the first 3 hours or so, then complete
Ya lose for the rest of the ride... I personally think the latter is faster, but not by much. And swimming through 500 much slower people will be a big P.I.T.A.

I'm doing IMMT in 3 weeks but have never seen that course. How would it setup for something like this?

Jonathan Brown

I agree with Al. the numbers look more like 300 to 500. Also people tend to spend hours in the changing tent, so you may pass a few folks there. If you take Placid for example, the climb out of town gets the stupid cyclist riding with you (a smart cyclist) and the stupid cyclist is trying to be the king of the mountain the first freaking hill. Also you have the decent with people that dont know how to do it right and are all over the road. so you just spent 30 to 45 minutes in hell and stressed out because you wanted to draft.

BTW, i am a sh*tty cyclist... so my opinion really should not matter. Just thought i would give my feed back.

tim cronk

Tough call ... Mixed feelings... I did a REV3 Venice 70.3, they cancelled the swim, so it was a TT start into T1 for the bike, I was like 300th , spent the whole bike passing hundreds of people, ended up getting a drafting penalty (where and when I have no idea) the only time I wasnt passing people was when there were cars in the way.... Yep it gives you a faster bike split but I would much rather be at the front , its safer, and less worry about drafting penalty....I've been lucky enough to be in the first or second wave a couple times recently and much prefer that! I so wish I could swim an IM sub 1hr , even swimming 1:02-1:04 I find it takes 50-60miles on the bike to get really clean.

@JW I think IMMT would be fine for this technique even though you wont have much say in the matter with wave starts.

Mark Roberts

This will come into play for everyone doing Chattanooga. Last I heard they are going to bus everyone to the swim start, and it is first come first serve to get in the water. Not sure how many people are going to be lining up very very early, but there has been a lot of chatter about this on the Chattanooga facebook page and concern over the reduced event time -- Chattanooga is starting at 0730 due to the later sunrise, but still finishing at midnight. I suspect many slow swimmers will be scrambling to be at the front of the line.

Kori Martini

JW- the start at IMMT is defined by AG, not self-seeding. So you'll go when the men 35 and up start. I, on the other hand, am pretty much forced into this situation as Rich describes, since my AG goes absolutely last. Hoping to maximize this on-your-left business as much as possible, especially since the bike course at IMMT isn't especially dangerous in the beginning (ie Placid).

tim cronk

Posted By Mark Roberts on 23 Jul 2014 08:08 AM


This will come into play for everyone doing Chattanooga. Last I heard they are going to bus everyone to the swim start, and it is first come first serve to get in the water. Not sure how many people are going to be lining up very very early, but there has been a lot of chatter about this on the Chattanooga facebook page and concern over the reduced event time -- Chattanooga is starting at 0730 due to the later sunrise, but still finishing at midnight. I suspect many slow swimmers will be scrambling to be at the front of the line.

If this is the case it will be like IMLOU and yes the slingshot will be in full effect... Sure was hoping they would do a seeded TT start...While I'd much prefer lining up in front , if its like IMLOU its just not worth the stress and effort... We'll all be in the water in 30min or less more than likely...

Mark Roberts

I was hoping Chattanooga would do a seeded TT start as well - But with the swim course being in a river with no sharp turns I don't think swimming around people will be a big issue. I hope to swim 1:05 or better, but I'm not going to get up extra early and sit in the line for hours just to be among the first into the water.

Coach Rich

To JW's point about riding near faster people: when I raced IMCDA'05, I found myself riding with the leaders in the M30-34 AG, 3 of them. I was 35-39 so didn't care about their race. But I just rode 4 bike lengths off the 3rd guy all the time, cue'd off of them on climbs, etc. In fact, my plan on the hills (this was v1.0 of the course, only had ~3 hills on it) was ride at 280-285w but I turned this down to ~260-265w when I saw this was good enough: I was easily still riding with these guys, they were similar body types to me or a touch bigger = 265w as good enough. 

Anyway, it was great to just have something to do and look at, riders to cue off of, have a visual reference for my effort/pace changes were expressing themselves, etc. 

William Jenks

I tend to think that this strategy would work well in a low-moderate density race. I've certainly felt like I could take advantage of legal drafting in a couple of 70.3 races with age group starts. However, with all the IM races being so dense these days, I would worry that the issues that Matt and Al bring up might dominate. It makes me think a little bit about dense marathons...in those super-dense races, the best starts are ones like Boston where you are already in more or less the right speed group. However, of course, you don't have the legal draft advantage in running quite so much.

GMAN 19030

I've had my best (or what I felt were the best) bike legs during races where I was in a later wave and could slingshot off slower cyclists. For example, I passed like 1500 people at the Austin 70.3 in 2011.

zwuba

Well I did exactly this when I started with triathlon ... I was a terrible swimmer but a pretty strong cyclist so no matter which distance I raced in I found myself in "slingshot drafting" (I like this term somehow).
During my months and years of training I've become faster and stronger in all disciplines but especially on the bike I'm still crushing the race. In my experience there are only a few percent of really strong cyclists that are also fast triathletes but if you miss them on the bike course you won't pick them up on the run.
On the other hand if you are too far off out of the water and you have to burn a lot of your "matches" on the bike to catch up to them you may also be second at the finish line ....

I also understand now that the race strategy for "having your personal best possible race result" must be different than when "going for the podium/win".

Rich Stanbaugh

Looks like IMCoz has moved to a wave swim start based on AG, and my AG is last... so I will get a chance to see how this works. I imagine on a windy course that the draft-zone is blown downwind, so to get the full benefit while passing, best to stay slightly on the downwind side of the bike you are overtaking?

Any advice, experience, suggestions on how to maximize this situation appreciated!