The Triathlete's Triangle

It occurred to me as I was riding today that a lot of a person's ability in triathlon comes down to pain tolerance.

At first when I thought of it, it seemed like an oversimplification, but as I rode on I continued to think about it (as you do) and I decided that my original thoughts were not far wrong.

I think it is fair to say that if you take two people of equal fitness and sporting prowess and put them in a race, the one who hurts themselves more during the race will prevail. When I say hurt themselves more I mean in a physical exertion sense, rather than a pushing through an injury sense. Pushing through the injury kind of pain is just stupid.

The trick is of course that you can do things to make it hurt less. You can be really fit. If you are you can go faster before it starts to pinch. Or you can go slower and it may never really get that uncomfortable.

You can be technically very proficient. This will mean you can go quicker for less effort, once again meaning you can go faster before it starts to hurt. Similar to the fitness side of things, you can also go slower and have it not really hurt at all.

Of course if you do go slower in one of the above two scenarios it may mean you are beaten by somebody who is less fit or technically proficient than you, but hurting more. And that is kind of the point of what I am getting at.

In the end, assuming you have done everything you can around your fitness and your ability, how you do in a race will come down to how much you are willing to hurt.

Taking the above I think you can kind of break triathletes up into rough categories.

In the first you could put people who aren't fit, aren't technically proficient and don't really want to hurt. Just out to have some fun. Nothing wrong with this group, but they will generally be the slowest.

In the next group you could put people who have one out of three. They could be really fit, or technically very good or really willing to hurt. I reckon any of these three will get you to the line next, which is interesting because it shows that their are a lot of ways to skin a cat. I think a lot of the field in an Ironman would fit this category. Typically people who are really very fit and going at a low intensity in order to get to the finish line. I do think that having a bit of mongrel though can make up other areas that may be lacking. You can't do it on mongrel alone though. Being a unfit, unskilled hard man will still make you slow. At this end of the field I think one of the other two attributes is more critical.

You can probably guess what the next category would be. Those people with two out of three. Fit and technically good. Fit and willing to hurt, that sort of thing. This is where I would put myself if I had too. When I am racing I am typically pretty fit and very stubborn. It can get you a long way. In fact I would say that in this category things turn 180 and the willing to hurt becomes essential. My theory is that if you are fit or technically proficient and a little bit tough, you will always beat the guy who is fit and technically efficient but going easy. I think you see this towards the pointy end of races all the time.

The last category is those people who have all three. This is the category that the elite of the elite would sit in. Really fit, technically really good and really willing to hurt themselves. Watching the various races over the weekend just re-iterated this for me. Watching great champions prevail in races that perhaps you wouldn't expect them to. Crowie and Cam Brown I think are examples of this group. The experience that shines through because they know just how hard they can go and have the fitness and ability to back it up.

Anyway, not really sure what all this is worth. Just one of those things you think about when you are riding I guess. If it is worth anything, it could be that you could use it to identify which of the three areas you are lacking in and work on that. I think that might be what I do with it.