triathlon permutations

So, I was musing to myself about the potential ironman today, trying to compare it to the 40km swim I did way back when I was all into swimming in that kind of crazy way. And it got me to thinking about how 40km is pretty much a marathon, so I’ve pretty much swum the run portion of the ironman. Not after biking 180km mind you, but still… (trail off)

This brought me to the idea that it would be really cool to do different permutations of triathlons. Being a swimmer and a not-yet-good runner, I sometimes experience a little pang of indignancy at the relatively minor role bestowed upon swimming by triathlons. It would be fun to do a triathlon where the longest portion was the swim, maybe a nice little 15k or something. You wouldn’t necessarily need to change the order of the events, just their relative time duration.

Three sections means 6 possible permutations:

1. swim bike run - the traditional triathlon
2. swim run bike - longer run and shorter bike? I think we’ve taken a step backwards…
3. bike swim run - Mmm… the long swim sounds right, but the short bike doesn’t do justive to the wonderfulness that is cycling.
4. bike run swim - No one likes over 5 hours of running.
5. run swim bike - Now we’re getting somewhere. No need to make the run any longer than it has to be.
6. run bike swim - Yep, this is it. Perrrfect.