What Is a Good
Triathlon Swim Time?

I have always felt that Age Group Tri swimming is fundamentally different from any other type of swimming. After working with triathletes for over 15 years, I continue to hear my Age Group athletes ask the same questions:

These were never easy questions to answer with objective, data-backed numbers.

Until now…

Here's why Age Group Tri swimming presents such unique challenges.

Time spent in the water correlates to improvements in swim speed. To get good at swimming you have to swim. This is what we call the “specificity” principle of training. Swimming training will improve your swimming better than running or riding will.

Swimming is fundamentally different from other sports. It requires more specific training than most others. We sit, stand, walk and run every day and have done since we were children. As a result we have a foundation in movement that easily transfers into other land-based sports. We know how to balance, how to move forward and how to breathe on land.

But moving through water is different. Balance is different. How you propel yourself forward is different. How you breathe is different.

To get really good at swimming you have to re-learn and then master each of these skills in the water. This requires a consistent time investment.

Pure swimmers and coaches know this. That's why they start swimming at a young age. “Specialist” swimmers spend hours in the water to improve their balance, propulsion and breathing.

On the elite end, specialist swimmers will spend upwards of 5 hours per day in the water! They dedicate hours and hours building their efficiency in the pool.

Triathlon swimming is different.

No triathlete, elite or Age Group, has 5 hours a day to spend swimming. A triathlete's training hours (and energy) have to be split between three disciplines. Additionally, the cumulative fatigue from running particularly stifles swim progress.

Despite this, elite triathletes know they need to spend hours in the water to improve. Especially if they don't come from a swimming background. Specificity, remember. Pro triathletes don't put as many hours into swimming as specialist swimmers do. But many will still swim 5-6 days each week.

That amount of swimming is not easy to do when you have to ride and run too. The pros may find (or make) the hours to swim every day, but I don't know any Age Group Triathletes that can swim 30+k per week while balancing their bike + run — not to mention hold down a job and family responsibilities!

This is what makes Age Group Tri swimming unique:

• →You don’t have the foundation of balance, propulsion and breathing in the water like a specialist swimmer that started young.
• →You don’t have the time or flexibility to invest the time to swim 30km per week like the pros do.

And so we face what feels like mission impossible. The goal is to get “fast,” but no one has enough hours in the week to get really fast.

This is what sparked my interest in finding objective numbers to support the idea of “fast” Age Group Triathlon Swimming.

How do you know if you actually swim fast?

In an effort to benchmark “fast” you might log in and check the SlowTwitch forums. Or maybe do some Strava stalking to see what pace the fast guy in your local club swam in his last race. Maybe you ask a friend what their pace is. Then based on what you hear, you'll go on to set unrealistic goals. All potentially based on hearsay and misconstrued facts.

Without objective data to work with, goals get set based on an idea of what sounds fast.

But what is really considered fast as an Age Group Triathlete?

My goal in this updated analysis is to put age group triathlon swimming standards into context for you, the Age Group Triathlete.

I have spent hours collecting updated race data and crunching numbers. My hope is that armed with this knowledge, you will set lofty but realistic goals and work with purpose and clarity towards achieving them.

I pulled the data from Ironman branded races only (purely because it was the most accessible). I took results from 11x full distance races and 12x 70.3 races over a 4 year period (2021–2024) to get a large enough data sample.

I included each of the Ironman Championship races along with some of the more popular races around the world.

Here is the complete list:

Full Ironman Races

• →IM Austria-Klagenfurt
• →IM Cairns
• →IM France
• →IM Frankfurt
• →IM Texas
• →IM Kalmar
• →IM Lake Placid
• →IM Wisconsin
• →IM World Championship Kona
• →IM World Championship Nice
• →IM World Championship St George

Ironman 70.3 Races

• →70.3 St. George
• →70.3 Aix-en-Provence
• →70.3 Coeur d’Alene
• →70.3 Elsinore
• →70.3 Jonkoping
• →70.3 Mont-Tremblant
• →70.3 Musselman
• →70.3 Oceanside
• →70.3 Sunshine Coast
• →70.3 Taupo
• →70.3 Zell am See-Kaprun
• →70.3 Cairns

After collecting the swim times for each AG over each year and cleaning them up to remove any anomalies and errors — shortened/cancelled swims/athletes that were pulled from the water early but still crossed the timing mat — I then sorted the data to make some sense of it and make it easier for you to look at and understand.

For the “Better Than Average” data I used the “median” athlete exiting the water in each race. That's the middle athlete, the one that separates the top 50% from the bottom 50% in a race.

I feel like this gives you a better idea of where you'd actually place relative to the field you're racing against. The mean or average gets thrown off by some really fast or really slow swimmers.

For the “Top 10%” I looked at what time it took to break into the top 10% of athletes racing in your Age Group on that day.

I was also interested in what it takes to be a good specialist “distance” swimmer in the pool. I thought it would be helpful for you to see what specialists are doing at your age in the same sport.

The numbers are pretty interesting.

Let's take a look.

What does it take to swim in the top 50% in your Age Group?

Across all the races I analysed, the average middle of the pack guy swims at around 2:07/100m for an Ironman and 2:08/100m for a 70.3.

The average middle of the pack woman swims at around 2:12/100m for an Ironman and 2:13/100m for a 70.3.

But those overall numbers only tell you so much.

Obviously the first thing you'll want to do is determine how well you stack up.

At the most basic level:

• →If on average you swim faster than the pace for your age group you can consider yourself “above average”.
• →If on average you’re slower than this time, and your goal is to be competitive you have a bit of catching up to do.

But there is a lot more we can learn from this data than whether you are above or below average.

Swim Times Get Slower As You Move Up Through The Age Groups

Every AG sees a decline in pace as they move up through the categories. The only exception being the W25-29 age group being faster than the W18-24 AG over the IM distance.

This is to be expected, but you can use this knowledge to your advantage.

The majority of triathletes learned to swim as adults. As an adult onset swimmer, chances are you're nowhere near your genetic swimming potential.

Here's what I mean by that.

I will never swim as fast as I did when I was at age 24. Back then, swimming was my life. At that point I was swimming roughly 35 hours a week. I refined my technique and pushed my training when my body was in its prime.

Now, with reduced training hours and an older body I can't swim as fast. I still swim with pretty good technique which helps. But I will never swim as fast as I did in my prime.

If you never “peaked” in your prime like I did, you can continue to get faster as long as you stay consistent with your training.

Body position plays a bigger role in speed than power when you are in the water. So even if you aren't as strong as you get older, as long as you continue to improve your technique you can get faster.

Average Full Ironman Paces Don't Differ Much From 70.3 Paces

Here's something that might surprise you: the swim paces between full Ironman and 70.3 races are remarkably similar.

The average middle of the pack guy swims at 2:07/100m for an Ironman and 2:08/100m for a 70.3. The average middle of the pack woman swims at 2:12/100m for an Ironman and 2:13/100m for a 70.3.

What's really interesting is that the average pace of a 70.3 swim is actually slightly slower than an Ironman.

While there isn't a huge gap between the two, you'd think that the longer the distance, the slower the pace. But that's not what the data shows.

Here's my theory on why this happens:

Many of the triathletes I meet ultimately want to race a full distance Ironman, but most only want to commit when they're confident they can finish the distance. So 70.3 races become the stepping stone to longer races.

This means you get more first-timers and less experienced long-course athletes signing up for 70.3s than full Ironmans. These newer athletes naturally bring the average times down.

There are other things that matter too; course conditions, wetsuits, and currents all play a role, but experience level is the most consistent factor I've seen across all the data.

It's also worth noting that swim times have gotten slower since my original analysis.

In my 2013-2017 analysis, the average middle of the pack guy swam 2:02/100m for an Ironman and 2:06/100m for a 70.3. The average middle of the pack woman swam 2:09/100m for an Ironman and 2:12/100m for a 70.3.

So we are about 5 seconds per 100m slower across the board.

To be fair, the list of races I compared is slightly different in this analysis vs the 2013-2017 races, and we know swim times can vary significantly from course to course.

But, to me, this may signal that the sport is pulling in more everyday athletes, not just the elite few — something I think Ironman has tried to make a reality (because it makes them more money!).

Mean Vs Median

As I've mentioned, the “better than your average” times took the median swim time for every age group in every race, as that gave a better indication of where you sat relative to the field on race day.

I thought in this analysis it'd be interesting to look at the mean swim times in comparison to the median, to get a sense of how much the faster swimmers or slower swimmers impact average paces across each discipline on the day.

For 70.3 races, men's average pace is about 2:08/100m, while the middle of the pack guy swims 2:06/100m.

Women show the same pattern — 2:14/100m mean while the middle of the pack lady swims 2:12/100m.

While the gap isn't huge, it makes sense when you think about it. The slower swimmer or swimmers having a really tough day in the water can be very slow, and they drag that mathematical average way down.

The median sits much closer to what the actual middle-of-the-pack athlete is doing.

The Mean Vs Median Gap Gets Bigger As Athletes Get Older

In the younger age groups like 25-29 and 30-34, the difference between mean and median is pretty small, like 2-4 seconds per 100m.

But by the time you get to the 65-69, 70-74, and 75-79 age groups, that gap jumps to 10-15 seconds per 100m.

What this tells us is that the tail of very slow swimmers gets much longer in the older AG, which skews those averages even more.

Men's Fields Are Tighter Than Women's Fields

For men, the mean versus median gap is about 2 seconds per 100m overall. For women, it's more like 3-4 seconds per 100m.

Women's fields seem to have more variance — you get a mix of really stronger swimmers alongside athletes who are just trying to survive the swim. This creates a wider spread of results.

The same patterns hold true for full Ironman races, just slightly more pronounced.

For Ironman men, the median pace sits around 2:07/100m while the mean is about 2:10/100m. For women, it's 2:12/100m median versus 2:15/100m mean.

Again, that gap widens significantly in the older age groups.

Again this makes sense to me. Just showing up to do an Ironman at 79 years old is a huge flex — even if it takes close to 2hrs to complete!

Here's what this means for you practically.

If you're using mean times to plan your pacing, you'll underestimate how strong the middle of the pack really is, especially in younger age groups.

You might think you're swimming “faster than average” when you're actually right in the thick of things.

But if you use median times, you get a much clearer picture of what the athlete swimming right next to you looks like.

Earlier I mentioned that swim times can vary significantly from course to course.

Here's why that matters more than you might think: the swim splits in a race can be very deceptive. You generally can't take them at face value, and you definitely shouldn't beat yourself up based on them as you're running into T1.

You might think you had a particularly bad swim because you were 3 minutes slower than your last race.

But that's not necessarily the full picture at all.

The Same Course Can Swing Significantly From Year To Year

For both men and women, identical courses can fluctuate 5-10 minutes depending on the year.

Take IM Austria women's times as an example — 1:16:40 in 2021 versus 1:30:14 in 2022.

That's a 14-minute swing in the median time!

Or look at IM France for men — 1:15:20 in 2021, 1:17:19 in 2022, then 1:13:57 in 2023.

To me, that's not an “everyone suddenly got slower or faster” situation.

It's conditions: currents, chop, water temperature, course layout tweaks, or even mistakes in placing the swim buoys.

The Data Is Actually Very Consistent

When you zoom out across all the races, men's overall average pace from 2021-2024 sits right around 2:05/100m, and women's around 2:11/100m.

Despite those big swings at individual races, the global field average stays steady year to year.

This tells us that athlete quality is pretty consistent — the variation is almost entirely down to the conditions and course layout on the day.

World Championships Are Different

Kona and Nice consistently show faster average paces than the other races in the data set.

Men at World Champs swim around 1:56-1:58/100m versus the field average of 2:05/100m. Women swim around 2:04-2:05/100m versus the field average of 2:11/100m.

This shows the impact of a qualification process on the field that is racing. You're removing a big chunk of the long tail athletes, so on average the paces are quicker.

What's interesting here is that the times are faster despite the mass in-water start and the non-wetsuit swim in Kona.

In theory that should slow things down, and yet it's faster.

This gives you some insight into the step up in quality between a World Champs race and a regular IM race.

Key Take Away

I think the key insight is one that so many triathletes struggle with: don't panic if your time looks way off from what you expected.

That can be tough to accept if you are racing the clock, but it's something that is completely out of your control on race morning.

Some courses are just consistently tougher. Without calling out specific races, you'll notice certain venues consistently produce slower times year after year.

That's the course talking, not your fitness.

The bottom line is this: don't get too hung up on your swim time when comparing across different races.

Focus on your placing within your age group and how you felt in the water.

The clock can lie, but your relative position usually tells the real story.

Here's something most triathletes don't think about until they're living it on race day: swimming right in the middle of the pack creates a whole bunch of problems that have nothing to do with how fast you actually are in the water.

Your main focus should always be on what's happening in your age group — those are the people you're directly competing against.

But those overall median times matter more than you might think, because they tell you where the biggest crowds are going to be on race day.

When you swim right around the median time, you're swimming with the highest traffic and biggest groups on the course.

This means fighting for space at every turn buoy.

Everyone knows it's no fun getting breaststroke kicked in the forehead going around a buoy, but that's exactly what happens when you're in the thick of things.

While the rolling wave starts help a bit, if you come out of the water right in the middle of the overall field, you're leaving T1 with a massive group of people.

Depending on how popular the race is, this can be hundreds of athletes all hitting the bike course at the same time.

This means you'll likely have to burn matches early to avoid getting stuck in drafting packs that form when large groups ride together.

For 70.3 races, the average men's swim time sits around 39:51 (2:06/100m), and women's around 41:49 (2:12/100m).

That's only about a 2-minute gap between them.

With rolling starts becoming more common, this means the middle of the men's field and the front-to-middle of the women's field are often hitting T1 at exactly the same time.

For full Ironman, the traffic jam is even more pronounced.

Most men's median times cluster around 1:10-1:20, which means the largest packs in the water and the biggest T1 congestion happen in this 10-minute window.

Women's medians are slightly slower at around 1:15-1:25, but they overlap heavily with the back half of the men's 35-39 and 40-44 age groups.

If you're a median swimmer in an Ironman, finishing around 1:10-1:20, you're going to be right in the thick of the largest traffic packs.

Expect drafting issues on the bike, crowded transitions, and tactical stress that has nothing to do with your actual fitness.

If you can get stronger than the median and swim sub-1:05, you avoid most of this congestion entirely. If you're slower than about 1:25, you end up behind the main field but in much clearer water.

It's that middle zone that's the worst place to be if you want to race clean and avoid getting caught up in other people's race tactics.

Now that we have an idea of what it takes to be better than the average Tri Swimmer, lets move up the ranks.

What does it take to be good?

Using the same data, I looked at the times it takes to break into the Top 10% of swimmers coming out of the water on race day.

And there's a big difference between average and good.

The first thing that jumps out from the data is the fairly substantial jump in pace from the middle athlete in any age group to the ones breaking into the top 10%.

At The Top End, Full Ironman Paces Are Still Faster Than 70.3 Paces

The average top 10% swimmer is still faster over the IM distance versus the 70.3 distance, but not by much — the difference is pretty small.

This makes sense when you think about it.

The swimmers breaking into the top 10% have more experience. They have a better grasp of pacing, how to race, and how to manage open water conditions.

Your Aerobic Pace Is Similar Regardless Of Distance

This similarity in pace between IM and 70.3 swims is really interesting.

At the top end of the field, the average pace a swimmer holds over 3800m is remarkably close to what they hold over 1900m.

This suggests that the aerobic pace you settle into is pretty much the same whether you're swimming for 30 minutes or for an hour.

I think that's exactly what's happening here, and we see this at the elite level too.

Look at the elite marathon swimming world championships.

The winning time for the men's 5k marathon swim in 2025 was 57:26 — that's a 1:08/100m pace.

It took 1:59:55 to win the 10k marathon swim — a 1:11/100m pace.

That's only a 3-second difference per 100m when you double the distance!

This pattern holds consistently over time.

Back in 2017, the 5k winning time was 54:31 (1:05/100m) and the 10k was 1:51:58 (1:07/100m).

The slower times in 2025 were down to warmer and rougher conditions in Singapore versus Hungary in 2017 — which again shows you how much conditions matter, even at the elite level.

Provided you're fit, breathing well, and have the fuel to burn, you don't slow down much once you tap into your aerobic swim pace.

If you're new to triathlon swimming, this should fully convince you that you don't need to swim 3800m or even 2500m straight in training to prepare for an Ironman race.

Your body will find that sustainable aerobic pace and hold it, whether it's for 30 minutes or 70 minutes.

The Jump From Average to Good

We've already touched on the big jump needed to break into the top 10% on both the men's and women's side.

But let me put this into perspective.

It's a Big Gap

You're looking at a 6-7 minute gap between the median swimmer and the top 10% swimmer in each age group over the 70.3 distance.

Double that to 12-13 minutes over the IM distance.

That translates to about 20 seconds per 100m faster across the board.

Unless you were a complete beginner who did their first IM or 70.3 race without properly preparing, dropping 20 seconds per 100m is no small feat.

It will take a significant amount of time and focused effort to see that kind of improvement.

The median swimmer is typically someone who can get through the distance without too much drama. They've got the basics down and can maintain a steady rhythm.

But the top 10% swimmer has usually developed real technique, efficiency, and race tactics.

They know how to draft effectively.

They can handle contact and chaos without falling apart.

They've learned to pace properly and often have years of consistent training behind them.

Most importantly, they've likely addressed fundamental technique issues that the middle-of-the-pack swimmer is still carrying around.

You can't just swim more volume and expect to bridge that gap — you need to swim smarter and address the specific limiters holding you back.

I've shown you what you need to be capable of to be an average, good, and very good triathlon swimmer.

But what about the specialists?

How do we stack up against adult swimmers who actually focus on swimming?

To answer that, I pulled up the World Aquatics Masters World Championships qualifying times from Singapore 2025.

“Masters” swimming is the competition platform for swimmers over 18, and the age groups are split in a similar way to triathlon, which makes it easy to compare.

To qualify for Masters World Champs, you have to achieve the qualifying time in each event for your age group.

I wanted to compare apples with apples as much as possible, so I pulled the 200m and 400m long course qualifying times for each age group and calculated what that would look like as a theoretical CSS (Critical Swim Speed) pace.

Now, swimming at CSS pace in the pool and finishing the swim leg of a triathlon are very different things.

Pool swimming doesn't have wetsuits, currents, other people kicking you, or the need to save energy for a bike and run.

But if you know your CSS pace, this gives you a pretty good idea of how you stack up against the theoretical CSS pace of a specialist swimmer in your age group.

The comparison isn't completely fair.

We're comparing open water times to pool times, but looking at the CSS pace of the athletes I coach, the standards of being a great swimmer are quite a bit higher than the standards for being a good tri swimmer.

There's a fairly simple explanation for that…

A majority of masters swimmers come from a swimming background. They learned and swam competitively at a young age.

And most of them would be considered very good or great tri swimmers.

Many of the swimmers that race at Masters World Championships swim 5+ times a week.

And they do so without the added fatigue of running and riding.

Carrying fatigue from your other training significantly impacts your progress in the water.

So, while you see a significant gap between what it takes to be competitive in triathlon swimming versus what it takes to qualify for Masters Worlds, the intention isn't meant to discourage you — it's just helpful context for understanding where triathlon swimming sits in the broader swimming world and why comparing yourself to pool swimmers doesn't always make sense.

This is something I've always been curious about.

Partly because it hits close to home for me. I come from a swimming background, but I find running the most challenging of the three disciplines.

But wanting to look at these numbers was influenced by my coaching experience with AG triathletes too.

Triathletes who come from a running background tend to face a bigger challenge when building a faster, more efficient swim, especially if they're picking it up later in life.

But what about the reverse?

Do strong swimmers struggle more with running?

Some of this is pretty obvious when you think about it.

If you're a strong swimmer coming out of the water at the pointy end of the field, you can only hold or fade, you're already at the top. You can't really make significant gains from the top 10%.

Whereas if you start near the bottom after the swim, you can't fade any further — you're likely to either hold your position or gain spots.

That pattern is quite evident in the data.

But there were some other interesting insights that came to light that are worth highlighting.

Strong Swimmers Fade on the Run — Across Every Group

This pattern held true everywhere I looked.

In every case — men, women, 70.3 and Ironman — the top 30% of swimmers lose ground when you look at how they stack up on the run.

The fade is most notable in women's Ironman races, where the top 10% of swimmers drop an average of 22% in their run positioning.

Men fade a bit less on average, but the pattern is universal: being a front-pack swimmer means you're likely not going to be a front-pack runner.

That matches what I've seen coaching over the years.

The Middle of the Pack Is the “Holding Zone”

Most athletes that exit the water in the mid pack, hold a similar position on the run.

Their drift is closer to zero, maybe you lose 4% or gain 4%, but you're not dramatically climbing up the ranks, nor dropping down them.

Back-of-Pack Swimmers Climb Hard on the Run

From about the 70th percentile down men gain between 8-19% in positioning relative to their swim performance during an Ironman and 8-13% in 70.3s.

Women show similar gains — 11-19% in an Ironman and 8-13% in 70.3.

The biggest movers are the bottom 10% of swimmers, who often jump 15-20% of the field during the run.

As I said before, that's somewhat intuitive — you can't fade any further, so you're likely to either hold your position or gain spots, and a lot of poor swimmers gain.

But, even with those gains, the slowest swimmers are still well behind overall because the deficit from the swim is too large to erase completely.

This is why you often see strong cyclists and runners plowing through the field after a weak swim, but if they are racing a field of reasonably strong athletes, they're fighting an uphill battle the entire race.

Ironman Exaggerates Everything

The longer race makes the extremes more extreme.

The fade is harsher in Ironman than 70.3, especially for front-pack swimmers. Top 10% women fade 22% in Ironman races versus 18% in 70.3.

But the gains are also bigger for the slowest swimmers — bottom 10% men gain 19% in Ironman versus 13% in 70.3.

The longer race simply gives more time for strengths and weaknesses to play out.

Ultimately this data confirmed what I already know to be true.

If you start at the very front after the swim, it's statistically probable that you'll get run down — you can only go backwards from there.

Start mid-pack, and you'll likely stay mid-pack.

But if you're a weak swimmer, your race is all about damage limitation in the water because you will make up ground later.

“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice”

So now you know what the data says, but what do you do now?