Originally Posted by
Bah Humbug
That's a complicated question - you can only win in the run, of course, but you can certainly lose in the swim or the bike (or transition, for even more fun). Further, extreme run fitness can mean nothing if your bike fitness is low enough that you can't get off the bike and run close to as hard as you can fresh and, the fitter you are on the bike, the less it will take out of your run.
Personally, I did well with focused run training and "good enough" bike training, which meant lots of getting passed on the bike and lots of passing people back on the run.
The longer distances (half-iron and ironman) make the bike more central.
But, in draft-legal tri as these girls are doing, it's swimming and cycling that are most important, quite clearly, because you must be in the first or second swim pack because you must be in the first or second bike pack to have a shot of accomplishing anything. All the run speed in the world won't save you if the fast cyclists went flying away from you in a beautiful peloton while you struggled with the weak ones, or burned all your matches trying to catch up.
I agree with this assessment.
In a non-draft tri, swimming is the least important of the three disciplines. A decent swimmer who is a good cyclist and good runner can still time well. Obviously, if it takes an hour to swim 500 m, you can't make that up on the bike and the run to be competitive.
Hummer has the draft legal assessment spot on. You have to get out of the water first and you have to get with and feel comfortable and a peloton.
Yesterday, in CD's race the first two girls (we know one of these two girls, Jordan) out of the water had about a 30 second lead on the next group. The two got out of transition together and headed out together on the bike. The two of them didn't work well together and soon got swallowed up by the next group of about ten girls who were working well together. That group of twelve worked together pretty well.
The boys race after those girls was fun to watch. There was some very good biking in that race. The boys had six to ten racers in groups and all looked to be working well together.