Most people start with ‘sprint’ triathlons where the swim takes place in a pool. So you don’t need to worry about swimming in open water and you can easily become familiar with the distance, which is likely to be 400- 500 metres (just 16 – 20 lengths of a 25 metre pool).

You can swim any stroke. People feel they should swim front crawl but if breast stroke is your stroke, stick to what you know. Bad front crawl swimmers (many triathletes are) may exhaust themselves for the rest of the race but won’t move any faster than a good breast stroker.

Work on technique over speed and swim your own race. It’s important that you complete the whole of the event so pace yourself. The swim is your warm-up. You want to get out of the water relaxed, breathing easily, loose for the bike ride. The worst thing you can do is tighten up, as though that’s going to get you any nearer to the elite swimmers! Instead, remember that the first person out of the water will take fewer strokes per length than anyone else. If you’re nervous about swimming, the challenge is to make friends with the water, not to fight it. It’s worth investing in some comfortable goggles with good vision like the Barracuda Ultimate, Aqua Sphere Kaiman or Speedo Biofuse.

Three important skills for relaxation are:

Breathing: Gently let air out into the water and let the in-breath take care of itself.

Releasing your head: Keep your neck soft and look at the floor as you glide.

Gliding Practise gliding each time you go to the pool. Moving through the water without effort, with your arms soft and long, is the basis of all strokes. In breast stroke see how few strokes you can do by gliding with your arms extended before coming up for air. In front crawl, each stroke includes a glide of the forward arm as the other arm floats up out of the water.

Aim to swim twice a week from now until the event. Try to cover twice the distance of the race at least once a week. But don’t feel you need always to complete the whole of the race distance without stopping as this will hinder technique development. Try Interval Training. For example, swim 50 metres (2 lengths) in a target time, e.g. 70 seconds, plus rest (20 seconds) five times. In your training plan this might look like this: 250m (5 x 50m @70 secs on 90 secs). This will help improve your speed. Use the pool clock to help you with this. You’ll be leaving on the ‘black top’ and then the red.