Equality Triathlon

Hi there,

Did my 2nd tri, and first Olympic distance one, on Sunday. Happy with my performance and enjoyed it.

However it does irk me that all triathlons I'm aware of are heavily biased towards the cycling discipline - the ride is where the vast majority of time can be made or lost.

Are there triathlons with a greater equality between the disciplines?

For example with a 3k swim, 40k bike ride and 15k run most people would, broadly speaking, spend a similar sort of time on each event.

Cheers …. Simon.

Some people will be faster on the swim than others, some on the ride, some on the run, but all will be putting full effort in on each stage.  Whether the actual time spent on each stage is the same or not will make little difference to the eventual results.

simple - train more on the bike!!

I wouldn't say any tri is more heavily biased towards the bike - there are many many instances where better runners have chased better bikers down and won.  some of them making up quite large margins after T2.

I know that in my a/g I can keep in touch with most of the best in the swim and bike, but I'm a crap runner so I accept that the skinny whippets will leave me for dead there.

triathlon is a 3 sport event - accept the way it is irrespective of the distances

I fully expect to lose time in all 3 disciplines 

Thanks for the replies ..... I agree that near the top then the differences in each event matter, almost whatever distances, but as you move down I think the bike is where the biggest time gains/losses can be made - for example a poorer swim might cost me 2 minutes but a poorer bike ride would be 10-15 minutes.

Didn't mean to start argument and admit I am biased as cycling is the lesser of my three - eg. apx. 40th runner, 60th swimmer, 230th biker on Sunday (out of 700).

Anyway original question stands if anyone is aware of such events?

Tristar events have a 1km swim, 100km bike, 10k run - known as a 111 (add them up).  they also plan to have 222, 55.5. 33.3 and 11.1 events.  and they also plan a 200 - 1km swim, 169k bike, 30k run.  http://star-events.cc/site/en/tristar/formats-distances

Abud Dhabi tri have some different distances - http://www.abudhabitriathlon.com/event-information/the-distance.aspx

Interesting, but doesn't the 111 format mean you spend even more of the total race time on the bike? I have heard of the concept of an "equilateral triathlon" but never seen such a race. IMHO it'd require too much swimming for the average triathlete.

Its all relative isn't it? I'm very much a mid to back pack swimmer churning out around 30 -31 mins for a 1.5K swim, I always move up the field on the bike doing 40K in around 66 - 70 mins if there aren't any stonking great hills in the middle and then move up again on the run where 10K is sub  45 mins. This pretty well correlates with what happens when I race the three disciplines separately, i.e I come in the lower half of the field when taking part in swim races, finish between 30 - 50% down in bike races and generally come in the top 20% when running 10K's. 

I chase down clubmates all the time on the run, their all better cyclists than me but play to your strengths and work hard on the disciplines your weak at. Its true though that 50% of the time in any Tri is spent on the bike but then thats the easiest part aerobically, watch ITU races their basically a 10K run race. 

Is equal time on each discipline really equality though?  I haven't got a scooby with the swimming but riding a bike for an hour is a lot easier on the body than running for an hour, for the same level of perceived effort.  IMO the distribution of a standard tri (at least as far as running and cycling are concerned) are reasonably equitable.

Anyway, the only multi-discipline races I've got involved in are duathlons which have generally favoured running, so that's OK then. 

so a 3 hr swim and a 3 hour bike and a 3 hour run...............that wouyld mean the swimmers would have it made.and most of the runners would drown

If you ask me, a O/W Standard has too much swimming as it is!