Should Women Pace a Triathlon Swim Differently from Men?

As a demographic, the participation of women in the sport of triathlon has increased in recent years.  Here in the Midwestern United States, women’s triathlon races are getting more and more competitive at all levels of the sport, from the weekend warrior up to the elites.  One of the things that shocked us was that over half of the athletes coached with Dobkanize over the past year were women.  But at the same time, we currently have no newsletter articles dedicated to women.  It creates a fundamental question: should women approach a triathlon swim differently from men?  This article is the first of a series to answer this question.

Maybe there is no difference?  Or maybe men are better sprinters, or women are better at keeping pace?  Or maybe it is the reverse?  This article will not go into the physical differences that may affect results.  There are too many books and controversy on that subject already!  The data will be presented, and you can draw your own conclusions.  As in previous articles, competitive swimming data was used.  The best 1500 meter Long Course Meter performances for women were compared to their male counterparts.  As before, the top 50 times were taken from www.swimrankings.net.  This site is great because it not only provides the top times, but also the splits for each 100 meters of competitive swimming.

Data was calculated as follows.  The top-50 1500 meter swim times were broken down into 100-meter splits for men and women.  The average time for each split and gender was then calculated.  In this manner, the average split at 100 meters, 500 meters, 1500 meters or anything in between can be compared to see if men are any different from women at any stage of the race.  In order to account for the different swim times between genders, the data was centered on the median.  For example, if the overall median time for men is 16.5 minutes and women 16.6 minutes, then 0.05 minutes were added to all men’s splits and 0.05 minutes were subtracted from all women’s splits.

Why would competitive swimming times be relevant to open water swimming?  Obviously, it would be better to use open water swimming times, but these are not easily obtained.  Different competitive races have different race conditions, so it would be hard to pool together all those performances to get meaningful results.  By comparison, competitive swimming is much more controlled (no currents, waves or drafting), and so the results are more consistent.  The data in this article may not create a perfect picture, but should point to the general trends.  The 1500 meter swimming distance in competitive swimming is the same distance in an Olympic distance triathlon.

So, what are the results?  The short answer, no differences were found!  At every stage of the race, men pace the same as women on average to plus/minus 1 second, or plus/minus 1.5% of time.  There was no part of the race where women excelled over men or vice versa, to 95% confidence.  There was only one portion of the race with a difference to 90%:  the very first 100 meters.  Men may be ashamed to hear this, but it is the women who took the advantage here, suggesting that the opening sprint for women is more vicious and competitive on average than it is for men.  Since this data is from competitive swimmers, it is not possible to know if this same trend appears in an open water swim start.  It appears that the way to swim a fast 1500 is independent of gender, at least at a general level.  Some differences may be present that are less than 1.5%, but these differences are so small that you could see this variation from person to person regardless of gender.  The chart is below.

In summary, the data suggests that women should take a similar approach to splitting a triathlon swim as men.  Any data that is taken with male athletes in regards to splitting is likely applicable to women as well.  Obviously, differences will exist from individual to individual.  Some athletes will do better if they try and negative split their swim for example.  But this variation does not appear to be caused by gender, at least in a significant and universal way.  Hopefully you can use this information to better plan your training and racing regimen.  Until next time, happy training.

 

 

 You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook