Hacking the Kona Swim -- Coach P in 2014
Hacking the Kona Swim [2014]
My goal for 2014 is to have a competitive swim to be in a better place on the bike as the early miles are so crowded. Also, with the tight timeline between Tremblant and Kona, I can’t really work too hard on the bike and run...which leaves the swim!
My best swim on the Big Island is a 1:06, with a 1:08 in there too but three other swims in the 1:12+ timeframe aren’t competitive -- transition is literally empty after the 1:10 mark.
Caveat -- Swim performance in Kona is greatly dictated by conditions!
Training Ideas:
I was reading an article on Slowtwitch about Swim Nomenclature where Empfield talks about the correlation of a send-off interval for 10x100 and a Kona swim time...with 1:30 send off being the equivalent of a 1:05 Kona time, a 1:20 send off being a :57 Kona swimmer...so I would be looking to get to a 1:25 send off to be close to an hour.
As a reference point, my current swim training has me swimming 200s on 2:50 pace (touching the wall). I can swim 100s on the low 1:20s, but a 1:25 send off would be pretty aggressive. 
My tentative plan is as follows, and I welcome your input:
- Three Quality Swims: These would be short course swimming and I would keep them to 2,000 or 2,500. I am thinking a 1,000 warm up (I am old and like my warm ups), followed by various flavors of 50s / 100s at the target paces above. My training for Tremblant was a lot of long sets...think 1k to warm up. 1k pull, then 2x500, etc. Swimming for me is such a mental time game.
- Two Open Water Swims: These would be at my local beach in my skin suit as I will race on the big day. Typically about two miles of swimming as 4 x ½ mile. Bonus if I can find people to draft off of.
- Tempo Trainer: Bust out the metronome to make sure my swim cadence stays up across my critical sets. My open water swim performance improves with a higher cadence swim, and I have noted this in past Kona reports. I have the aerobic engine to sustain it and the rhythm allows me to avoid dropping the hips, etc. I have been working on this already for this year, and my 1:03 in Tremblant (wetsuit) is my fastest IM swim in some time.
Questions:
- Pull Buoy + Ankle Bands: I have found this is an excellent impersonation of how I race. I don’t kick at all, so I really rely on body position and my bodybuilder shoulders. Should I work these into my pool sets or just assume the open water swimming will take care of it and work on swim speed / fitness instead?
- Include an Event: Should I include a 5k Swim in Newport, RI as a confidence builder.
Swim Race Execution
Would love some Kona vet advice here.
- Lining Up -- You can’t swim inside the buoys at Kona (they won’t let you) and yet I always end up there. My best two Kona swims have had me trying to get left. This year I will line up on the left as best I can and aim for the turn buoy.
- Early Effort -- The first 10 minutes are super hard and aggressive. I normally just swim my swim, but wondering if I should plan on being a bit more solid with my effort here.
- Sticking with Feet -- My best swims in Kona have coincided with my best drafts. I must stick with feet / hips if I am to be competitive here.
Comments
When do you arrive in Kona? (This is actually material to my response, and not just being nosey).
Hey Coach, here are my thoughts, which should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. I like to line up my swim WKOs to reflect my race plan. Which is to get out to a very fast start, find the right set of feet on/near the buoy line, then have the stamina and compass to stay there and maintain form. With that, I work on form at least once/week - drills, pull, focusing on a few things at a time. At least one (usually two) session per week devoted mostly to building/maintaining top-end speed - 50s to 200's. One day devoted to long sets. Coach R's swim WKO's pretty much accomplish all of this (I just add drills and pull sessions). Because you've only got a month or so, there's no way you'll work your way from the 1:25 Master's lane to the 1:10 lane (those folks swimming in that far right lane are like the 420 FTP folks - it's nice to dream about, but it ain't happening anytime soon). But you can build that top-end speed onto your established base to help enable you to hold that speed the first 500 (the most critical part of the swim). I love bands and the pull buoy for tempo and form work, but that's about it. The benefit of OWS, to me, is sighting and swimming straight sans a lane line - skills that can easily save you 5 minutes on race day. And I'd rather see you do 3 or 4 sets of progressive 300's or drill work to warm up than a straight 1k (junk yardage).
More so than fitness, however, I strongly believe that strategy (and some luck) is what has predominantly dictated my swim times. I've gone into all IMs in good swim shape. The times where I got swallowed up by a group (coming from the left or right, never from behind), got on crooked feet, strayed away from the buoys, or couldn't navigate well because the visibility was lousy, the results sucked (1:06-11), and I muddled through the crowds in T1 and the first 40 on the bike. In those IMs where I raced near the front the first 500, could clearly see and find bubbles near the buoy line, and held on for dear life, the result was an empty T1 and clean, early riding (:59-1:01).
Kona-specific, I've never raced it, but I've taken many a practice swim to/from the coffee boat, and I've watched the race from the end of the pier. There may be a small tactical advantage going left, right, middle, but it all seemed to shake out at about 500 from my vantage point. I'm sure Dave and others can chime in on tactics. Keep in mind, this year the field will be reduced somewhat with the wave starts. The other two benefits you have are - there will be a lot of very fast swimmers who (more importantly) swim straight, and you've got unlimited visibility to keep them in sight. I would encourage you to use them both. Cheers, Mike
Patrick, I think you and I are similar kind of swimmers... not natural lifelong fish, don't/can't kick for shit, but can muscle our way to decent swim times. I pretty much (and purposely) nancy my IM swims and do them on cruise control where you go harder than I do on race day. Then again you're competing for Kona slots and I'm not. That's my long way of saying there's no way I would use a PB if I were training for a non-wetsuit swim.
@Mike I agree that there's entry outside of fitness to dictate a final time on race day, esp ocean open water. I will take your guidance on the swim sets as well...no more junk!
@robin and @Bob -- thanks for that feedback. Truth be told I really never learned how to kick...so I end up not kicking most of the time. And in Kona with the salt water there's a fair amount of flotation to be had...
Anyone else?
-OWS swim daily from arrival to Friday.
-starting at 2 weeks out, swim every 2nd day, shorter durations.
-Post an ad on ST / PMc Facebook / whatever for "1:00/1:02 IM swimmers for weekly OWS swim squad," and have a weekly race sim with full drafting as a group. No man gets left behind, and make it like a group ride where people take a pull / ride along. The goal here is getting a sense of what it feels like to swim an open 1:00, vs swimming a 1:00 with a draft. The other goal is to practice drafting, taking us to the next bullet ...
-practice drafting. This is a massively overlooked skillset and I'm convinced there are actual techniques, skills and approaches that can be developed and practiced. Unfortunately, most of us really only get to develop and practice these 2 / 3 times a year for about 180 minutes total, so it never really sinks in.
-absolutely positively yes to the 5k swim. Better yet, done without wetsuit.
-no to pull bouy and toys. from here to race day, deliberate practice of Rich's "lift heels" approach.
The work I would suggest:
-4 x per week sessions
-at least one weekly is a 40' tt swim.
-Starting mid-september, every session is race pace ... your first 10' are the strong effort you'll begin in Kona, and remainder sets of 300 to 500 are race pace.
On race day:
-Start close to the pier. for the last 2 years, I have started near the cannon (next to the cannon, actually ... I wanted to get on the TV!), 2 rows back and had the easiest first 10 minutes of any IM tri.
-'hold your ground, water polo' mental space as higher cadence muscular strokes from start until that big hotel that looks like a cruise ship.
-fall into race pace, which you now know from practice, for 5 minutes. no drafting.
-Then, and only then, get a draft and ride it out. Do everything in your power to keep on those feet.
(The reason I suggest the 5 minutes of non draft race-pace effort is this will give you a sense of what a huge drop in effort it is from non-draft to drafting. I'm personally ALWAYS amazed in races where I will be hauling ass at a high effort, and once I find some feet, it's like a gentle paddle. And I find myself thinking "there is NO WAY this pair of feet is going the 1:3x/100m that I was doing on my own, and I go out on my own ... only to be keeping pace with my puller.)
-The reason I suggest 15' is by that time, your puller has probably fallen into his race pace, and you can trust their effort instead of second-guessing your own.
-final tactical piece would be to try to get in a big group - not just a on single swimmer's feet - for the section on the return where the current just keeps you in the same place despite pulling your brains out. Can't remember offhand, but that's near the aforementioned hotel as well, isn't it?
-wear bright orange booties so I can find your feet and enjoy a 1:00 pull from you on race day.
http://triathlonresearch.org/triathlon-open-water-swimming-how-to-do-drafting/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12840639