Swimming Strategies in the Triathlon

By Dr. Richard Karrel

As a triathlete and former national champion swimmer, I have an appreciation of the importance of the swimming component of triathlons. While distances in specific events vary significantly, the Ironman triathlons organized by the World Triathlon Corporation involve a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a full 26.2-mile marathon run. This grueling regimen must be completed without break, in that order, and within the time constraint of a midnight finish, based on a 7 a.m. start.

Positioned at the beginning of every triathlon, the swimming portion of the race is critical in establishing an early lead. Swimming the course in under one hour guarantees any competitor a place near the front of the pack. One of the most common swimming mistakes in this stage is staying too close to other swimmers. Maintaining a smooth and consistent stroke is critical to finishing with a fast time, and this is virtually impossible when surrounded by hundreds of competitors. One strategy used to counteract this involves holding back for 15 seconds after the starting gun. When space opens, take an outside line at the edge of the group. Maintaining a position with few swimmers on the open water side, settle into a comfortable and uninterrupted rhythm. A moment of serious crowding occurs around the turn markers, when swimmers converge on a single point that they perceive as being the quickest route through. Avoid this traffic jam by giving the crowd a wide berth, maintaining the same relative position as before, at the open-water side. While this will extend the swimming distance slightly, maintaining a consistent rhythm pays significant dividends in overall performance.

Another swimming strategy involves working up to full speed. Some top swimming competitors conserve energy at the beginning of the race, operating at about 80 percent of maximum output for the first five minutes. This pays dividends toward the end of the race, when early leaders begin to run out of steam, opening opportunity for the steady swimmer to gain ground. Always remember that a triathlon is a three-event competition, and that high performance in one event does not necessarily transfer to the next. For triathletes who are not particularly fast swimmers, the best strategy often involves hanging back, conserving energy for the cycling and running stages ahead.

[About the author:] Richard Karrel earned his MD at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, completing residency training at the University of Chicago. He currently serves as Medical Director of the Louisville, Kentucky-based Narcotic Management Program.

What’s in a Name: Narcotics vs. Opioids

by Dr. Richard Karrel, Narcotic Management Program

When you think of narcotics, what comes to mind? For many, the connotation is a negative one, associated with the use of illegal drugs like heroin, marijuana, or phencyclidine (PCP). For others, the term may evoke a class of pain medications that have a psychoactive and sedative effect. The word narcotics serves as an inexact designation encompassing an array of dissimilar pharmaceutical compounds with multiple meanings, both legal and illegal. Yet the term remains in common use among physicians and patients to describe many of the medications prescribed for pain, including hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (Percocet), and codeine.

A more specific but less recognized term for these medications is opioids. While many associate the word with opium, this class of medications includes many painkillers that are more commonly known as narcotics, such as morphine.

Opioid medications attach to receptors found in the brain, gastrointestinal tract, and spinal cord, altering the body’s perception of pain. They may also cause sedation, euphoria, and respiratory suppression. In the short term, opioids serve as a safe and effective pain management tool; however, inherent in opioid use is the potential for dependence, which is why careful physician supervision remains a necessity for patients using them.

If your physician prescribes opioids, talk with him or her about safe usage and the potential for abuse.

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka, perhaps the most famous Czech writer, was born in Prague in 1883. Over his brief but intense career, Kafka composed several of the great classics of Western literature, including The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and The Penal Colony, as well as an avalanche of short stories, diaries, and letters. Over the last century, Kafka’s themes of human suffering and helplessness, black humor, and absurdity have proven so compelling as to force the word “Kafkaesque” into the English lexicon. The “Kafkaesque” world is one in which a sinister bureaucracy—often so wicked and nonsensical as to seem supernatural—holds sway; to many, that world is not so different from our own at its worst. Instead of celebrating human achievement, as many German writers had done before the First World War, Kafka warns us that our everyday lives are threatened by the institutionalized banality we create ourselves—for example, by the massive law court that swallows K in The Trial. Kafka’s messages, while often less than optimistic, have won him an enduring place in the minds of millions of readers—readers familiar with the difficulty, disappointment, and even the rage of life as a pawn within a totalizing economic or social system. Somewhat incredibly, considering his later popularity, Kafka hardly published during his lifetime and instead supported himself as an insurance clerk. After his death from tuberculosis, Max Brod, his friend and literary executor, disobeyed Kafka’s wishes that his papers be burned. Brod chose instead to publish them posthumously, a choice that was to influence the development of German, European, and Western culture.

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