Beginners Guide to Triathlon - Background

Triathlon is a sport rapidly growing in popularity, and is based on the three fundamental sports of running, swimming and cycling - all of which you probably did as a child. What is more many competitors are completly new to the sport, and not necessarily existing runners or swimmers looking for a change. They are real people looking for a challenge, an excellent fitness level and a great physique, and you can be one of them.

Triathlon was first conceived back in 1974, where a group of friends from the different disciplines started to train together and became competitive as to who was the fittest. Soon they began organising events combining the three sports, and the sport has taken off since then.

Variety is key to the appeal of triathlon. First you get a mixture of environments, perhaps a sea swim, followed by a cycle through the countryside, followed by an off-road run. The mixture of disciplines also keeps training interesting and varied. You train on all three sports, together with a combination of endurance, skill, speed and intense workouts. This does require careful planning to get the balance right, but it is both invigorating and motivating, and the mixture of training sessions reduces the risk of injury.

Then there is the triathlon community. There are triathlon clubs, magazines and websites across the country and there are numerous races that you can enter even as a complete beginner. Many races are run in age groups, meaning that you compete directly against athletes at a similar level.

Triathlon Formats

Any event involving swimming, cycling and running is a triathlon and as you look at local races, you will see a large range of distances are used, however the main lengths are:

Sprint - 750m swim, 22km cycle, 5km run. These shorter events are now the most common events, and provide a readily achievable goal for a beginner to aim for. Each race lasts less than 90 minutes and typical training time can be as little as 5 hours a week.

Olympic - 1500m swim, 40km cycle, 10km run. As the name implies this is the distance raced at the Olympics. It is best suited for newcomers with good endurance in one of the triathlon sports, or someone who has completed some sprint distance events previously. Races take two to three hours to complete, and typically you need to train for 8 to 15 hours a week.

Iron Man - 2.4mile swim, 112m cycle, 26.2m run. The ultimate endurance challenge, with the biggest event being the Hawaii Ironman. This should only be attempted by very experienced triathletes, with significant time to invest in training. Often there are also half distance ironman events staged, which can be used as a stepping stone to the big one.

You race against the clock, over the total time for all three aspects of the race. As a result the transition from swimming to cycling and from cycling to running is also important, and is often called the fourth discipline in the sport.

Team relay competitions are also becoming popular at many events. Here teams consist of a swimmer, a runner and a cyclist who each complete one stage of the triathlon, giving athletes of one discipline the opportunity to experience the world of triathlon.

Tomorrows blog - Beginners Guide to Triathlon - Starting Out

Welcome to triRESOURCE

triRESOURCE is the new triathlon resource for triathletes of all abilities and experience levels.

It is designed to be a comprehensive website of relevant triathlon information, links, news and special offers on books and kit.

Over the weeks we will be adding more and more information to help you get into the sport if you are a beginner, or improve your performance if you are an experienced triathlete.