Enough is enough, this has to stop now folks, it’s getting embarrassing and it’s going to end badly for both of us.
I’m not referring to my triathlon career, this column, or even my habit of hoiking my bib shorts up and relieving myself on roadsides, but instead to the number of people who have suddenly started asking me for coaching advice.
I should stress that it’s only one part of triathlon that anyone seeks my zen-like guidance on, and it is of course swimming. This is partly down to results, but also down to the fact that people can actually see me when I’m cycling and running, and no one in their right mind would want to emulate that.
However, they can’t see me when I’m lurking below the waterline so they only have my swim times to go on – if they could see my crabby arm stroke, non-existent kick, and other dirty doings I get up to beneath the waves I suspect that requests for coaching advice would dry up sharpish.
Kraken-like
My swim times this year have been quite good and all in all it hasn’t been a bad old year in the neoprene part of races.
I’ve emerged Kraken-like from a couple of tri swims in first place, won a 10km swim, lopped five minutes off my PB in another, become fastest old git (Masters) in the West Midlands at the 5km open-water champs, and recently swam the full 11 miles of Windermere in 4:40hrs, earning me an impressively thick slate trophy for doing so quicker than any other 55-year-old.
Unencumbered as I am by modesty I haven’t been especially shy about these achievements, but instead of the praise I was fishing for I have received several requests to give people advice on how to become better swimmers.
I’ve had people collar me in transitions, corner me at registrations, bend my ear at barbeques, ask me to go swimming with them, and even threaten to send me videos of themselves swimming for me to review, like I’m a judge on Strictly Come Freestyle.
There’s only one problem with all this – I don’t have a bloody clue how to make you swim faster. If I did, I’d apply this knowledge to myself first.
You don’t honestly think I have my claw-like, arm-swinging technique out of choice do you? No, that is the way my body moves and I am powerless to change it, all I can do is summon up enough obstinacy and lung capacity to fashion it into forward propulsion.
I have no idea what makes a good swim stroke other than when I’ve watched proper swimmers like Cassie Patten or Hector Pardoe overtake me.
No easy route to watery greatness
Several people come to me in the belief that some small change to their technique is the magic bullet that will turn them into Florian Wellbrock, and that all they have to do is alter their hand entry as per the YouTube video they’ve just watched and lo! – twice the speed at half the effort.
That has not been my experience. No, I’m afraid that if there was some easy route to instant watery greatness, we’d all be doing it. Instead, as with most things, I’ve had to achieve competence the hard way, namely getting up at 4am three mornings a week for the last (insert large number) of years to swim between 5 and 7km at City of Coventry Swimming Club squad sessions.
This, however, is not what people want to hear. They want the effort-lite version, so please, I beg you, stop asking me.
I don’t know the answers to your questions, and I’m starting to feel bad that any tips I give you out of politeness aren’t helping. Honestly, I might be relatively quick for an ageing triathlete but I couldn’t become a coach if you took all my teeth out and put 52 seats in.
The best advice I can give you is this – go and see a proper coach. Swimming clubs are full of them, they know their subject, they give their advice freely, and you can still hear what they’re shouting at you when your head is underwater.
Also, unlike me, their advice is not tempered by the fear that they might tell you something that makes you faster than them.
Top illustration credit: Daniel Seex
