Beginner vs Amateur vs Pro: Swimming Edition | How Fast Do Pro Triathletes Swim?

let me introduce natasha walker kat matthews and myself now there's one significant difference between the three of us one of us is a beginner one is an amateur and one's a pro and you might have guessed who's who but have you worked out what we are doing here well today is the first in the series of our beginner versus amateur versus pro and what better place to start than with the first phase of a triathlon the swim [Music] [Applause] if you watch or follow the sport of triathlon then i expect you're going to be impressed with the performances and the efficiency of the pros but it's one thing looking at times on a result sheet or listening to our race report in the show it doesn't necessarily give you that real idea of just how impressive they are so today we plan to show you and demonstrate just the difference between a beginner and a pro using real people now obviously within triathlon you're going to have discrepancies between the swim the bike and the run and some athletes will be stronger and some disciplines compared to others it's the swim that's probably going to show up the biggest discrepancy especially in the beginners and the age groupers you can often see them struggling with the swim but that doesn't mean that all pros favor the swim either although that said when it comes to say in iron man distance it's normally equaled out with the bike and the run and any difference is soon compensated but today we're obviously focusing on the swim and it's time to take a look at today's lineup representing the beginners we have natasha she's a horse rider and multi-sport enthusiast her strengths are her endurance and ability to keep going weaknesses confidence on the bike her aspirations are to complete a half ironman triathlon representing the amateurs we have heather she's a full-time presenter who's taken part in a variety of triathlons strengths chatting weaknesses easily distracted aspirations are sub 10 hour ironman and to nail the flying mount representing the pros we have cat matthews she's a full-time army athlete her strengths are her sports life balance weaknesses swim starts her aspiration is to achieve a podium at kona all right we're going to start with the swim and well today it is just the swim and we're going to keep things super short so 400 meters aka a super sprint triathlon because well it's quite chilly in there and you know i think that's probably far enough for me to swim at the moment anyway but we need to kind of work out how to do it and i was really tempted to do a math start because i was like oh you know maybe maybe for a moment i could sit on your feet cat um but then i was like actually we probably should do this as sort of a more fair system so we're going to do it staggered and this is where some math is maybe going to be involved i'm thinking maybe setting off obviously you natasha being our beginner first then me then cat potentially 30 second intervals but i don't actually know what times you guys like where you're at for 400 i mean you're you're fresh off the back of a strong iron man performance what do you reckon off the back of a poor swim in a good iron man performance so i think i would give myself a target of maybe five minutes 30. okay right well that's definitely quicker than me what what do you do you have any idea i mean i really actually don't know i know that i have quite a lot of endurance but i've not got any of the power that you have so i i well maybe eight to ten okay i reckon you'll be closer to eight okay i mean should we should we go with go with eight minutes let's go with eight and i think i'm gonna be pretty much in the middle of you guys i would love to say six but that was like i just don't do anything fast at all i know you say you don't but you still you know train for an ironman so i reckon if we go at 30 seconds into falls that maybe will work so if we set you off first then me at 30 and then you 30 after that um you've got chance for warm up if you want i'm just going to warn you i was swimming in a thermal wetsuit until two days ago here so um you might want to bed out in mind but any any thoughts does that sound good with you guys sounds good looking forward to overtaking you guys i know i'm going to see if maybe if you do come past i'm going to hold on to your ankles that's my tactic what about you how are you feeling i prefer minutes head start especially with you but um i'll might pull it out bad you know just a little bit of confidence here okay cool well guys if you want you can go and have a warm-up or a refresher we should call it all right you can see the difference here in like probably the speed we'll get a swimmer because natasha is dressed for the cold cat is just hardcore and like wearing normal i'm kind of somewhere in the middle i've just gone for a headband today i'm like easing myself out of winter gear but you've already had a sneaky warm-up how is it in there uh horrendous so we're actually we're actually on point here yeah i mean it is only 400. but i am going to take a leaf out of your book because i think it's sensible that we do have a little dip just to kind of acclimatize ourselves so um yeah warm-up time or cool down i don't know something like that isn't it things are getting serious so done the warm-up and it's not as cold as i thought even natasha has taken her gloves and boots off so i'm gonna have to do it because i think i'm gonna need all the leg kick help i can get this is the first time of the year going barefoot [Music] so now that our athletes have warmed up it is time for them to get onto the starting line natasha will be heading off first then heather and cat will follow at 30 second intervals but enough delay let's get this started three two one go [Music] two [Music] all right one on team done um scores on the doors we are in the order we expected but fast is first you want to go to time i got a 5 32. nice um i was pleasantly surprised with a 544 and 808. we we kind of reckoned eight minutes so that was awesome the best line was natasha finishing going that was nice was it nice how have you still got the long burn i think i'm doing something wrong we're going to work on our beginner but um do you guys enjoy that yeah same thing [Music] the main question is are you back for the bike yeah that's the worst bit well we will be back for the bike thank you both of you guys for awesome effort today i think it's time to go and get warm and have some cake or whatever it is pros do i don't know i think the order of events were as expected but what did you think of the differences between each of us well let us remind you of the times and what pace they equated to natasha swam eight minutes eight seconds for her 400 meters giving her a pace of two minutes two seconds per 100 i was a five minutes 44 equalling a 126 per 100 and cat a 532 giving her a 123 per 100 meter pace now i would expect the differences to be more exaggerated if we up the distance to the 3800 meters of an ironman swim as fitness conditioning and experience will play a greater role however that's just one for another day but up next is number two in our beginner versus amateur versus pro series see you at the cycling

Channel: Global Triathlon Network

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Rating: 4.8802752 out of 5

Keywords: triathlete, pro triathlon, professional, vs, versus, rookie, beginner, swimmer, open water, lake, ocean, cold water, goggles, wetsuit, swim wetsuit, GTN, Global Triathlon Network, triathlon, Triathlon (Sport), tri, ironman, Sports, swimbikerun, triathlon training, triathlon skills, iron man, tri bike, swimming, cycling, running, training, skills, coaching, kat matthews, vobster, ӱ, 4360, Վ, Ꮽ, Ᏸ, Յ, Ն, ꔨ, ᠫ, ཙ, ፕ15

Id: 1TjkZohkECU

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021