Getting Started #3 – Cure Your Short-Termitis, the Disease That Keeps You Slow

I was scrolling a triathlon forum the other day when I saw a post that gave me a little shiver. Someone had written it proudly, and a dozen people had cheered them on in the replies.

"My swim training is dialed. I've been going to the pool every Friday and swimming the full Ironman distance without stopping."

Everyone told them how impressive it was. Nobody told them the truth, so I will. That's not training. That's a test you're failing to learn anything from, over and over, every single week.

The Most Common Mistake

Let's talk about this piece of training suicide right now, because it's one of the most common mistakes in the sport and almost nobody sees it for what it is.

Here's why people do it. Swimming the whole race distance nonstop feels productive. It feels like proof. You climb out and think, "I did it, I covered the distance, I know I can finish." And that reassurance feels wonderful. It scratches the exact itch a nervous triathlete has, the fear of not making it. So you do it again next week, because it felt good today.

But feeling reassured and getting better are two completely different things, and this is the whole disease. Swimming 3,800 straight answers one question: can you finish? And the answer, once you know it, won't change next week. Every time after that, you're just re-proving something you already proved, while probably getting slower each week due to lack of adaptation and stimulus. You're not building speed. You're not building efficiency. You're rehearsing mediocrity and calling it dedication.

How Do You Train?

There are several ways to think about a swim session. Let's list them in order of increasing intelligence.

1. I'll just get in and swim until I'm tired. Distance is distance, right?
2. I'll swim the full race distance nonstop, so I know I can cover it. That feels safe.
3. I'll swim the race distance, but I'll try to hold a decent pace, so at least it's a little hard.
4. I'll break the workout into different distances and intervals, with a specific goal of the day to improve Speed OR Endurance OR Recovery.
   

Only one of those makes you better. And it's the only one that doesn't feel like reassurance while you're doing it, because it's uncomfortable, and it doesn't hand you a cozy "I finished" at the end. That discomfort is the tell. The session that builds you rarely feels as safe as the one that doesn't.

Compounding Cost or Interest

Now watch the cost compound, because this is where Short-Termitis really gets you. Swim the distance nonstop every week for a season and here's your return: you've spent dozens of hours and thousands of meters getting very, very practiced at swimming at exactly the speed you already swim. Then you line up on race day and swim, surprise, exactly as slow as you were in January. A whole season of training, and the clock says you stood still. That's not bad luck. That's the disease. You chose comfort every single week, and comfort compounds into a year of your athletic life spent going nowhere.

And once you know what Short-Termitis looks like, you start seeing it everywhere in the sport.

You see it in the athlete who never touches the pace clock, because leaving on a send-off is stressful and swimming on a set :20 rest requires less thinking. Feels nicer today. Teaches you nothing about pace for race day.

You see it in the athlete who only ever does the sets they enjoy and quietly skips the ones that hurt. Comfortable today. Slow forever.

And you see it, painfully, in the athlete who hires a triathlon coach to fix their swim, and that coach is a great cyclist and runner who was never actually a swimmer. It feels efficient, one coach for all three sports, tidy. But your swim is the most technical leg you've got, and handing it to someone who isn't a swim expert is the same short-term "that's easier" logic that keeps people slow. You wouldn't have a swim coach write your bike power plan. Stop doing it in reverse.

Careful What You Choose

Every one of these is the same trade: a little comfort now, in exchange for staying exactly where you are. That's the entire disease in one sentence. You keep picking the thing that feels good today over the thing that works over time.

So here's the cure, and it's simple to say and hard to do. Stop asking "did this feel reassuring?" and start asking "did this actually make me better?" Some of the best swim sessions you'll ever do will feel worse in the moment than a comfy nonstop distance swim, and they'll be worth ten of them. Trade the reassurance for the results. Do the uncomfortable, structured, faster work, the stuff that doesn't hand you a warm, big number for your Strava account, and let the payoff show up where it counts, on race day, on the clock.

Do that, and congratulations. We've cured your Short-Termitis.

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