The life lessons of Sam Long, triathlon's tortoise and hare all in one

A pretty weird thing has been happening these days at the races on the top professional triathlon circuit.
Coming out of the water, the big cheers aren't for the frontrunners. The roars come loud for the guy who's almost always in last place after the first leg of the swim-bike-run. That would be Sam Long, a Colorado native who lives and trains in Arizona and, in most races, struggles with competing as an amphibian.
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Put simply, Long, one of the world's top Half Ironman competitors and a top American on the Professional Triathletes Organization T100 Tour, kind of stinks at swimming — relatively speaking, of course. But that would be your thought if you watched Long dragging his water-logged frame out of the drink anywhere from two to four minutes behind the leaders.
And then — in a reasonably remarkable display of mental fortitude, leg strength, foot speed and aerobic efficiency — Long starts picking off racers one by one, until sometimes there aren't any more cyclists or runners to pick off. He is the tortoise and the hare all at once.
'A mantra I tell myself is, like, it's not about being the best swimmer, it's about being the best triathlete,' Long said during a recent interview from his Tucson home. 'So I do still have a lot of belief in myself overall as a triathlete.'
As well he should. Long, 29, might be the 170th-ranked swimmer on the PTO T100 tour. But he's ranked eighth on the bike and fifth on the run. That tallied to a fifth-place finish on last year's worldwide T100 tour, which has a format similar to auto racing's F1 and races that include a 2-kilometer (1.24-mile) swim, an 80-kilometer (49.7-mile) cycle, and an 18-kilometer (11.2-mile) run. He won three Ironman 70.3 races last year and finished second in the Ironman 70.3 North American Championship last month. The longer run (13.1 miles) and bike ride (56 miles) in the Half Ironman races give him more time to catch the leaders.
In the Half Ironman races, where the swimmers are generally not as fast as they are on the elite T100 Tour, which includes just 20 entrants in each race, he can be in the middle of the pack of swimmers and go on to win, though sometimes he pulls off some seeming miracles in those races, too.
At the Ironman 70.3 Eagleman last weekend in Maryland, he finished 21st in the swim — 4 minutes, 32 seconds back — then pedaled and ran them down for the win. But every time he enters a T100 race, he knows he is going to be spotting some of the best of the best in the world roughly several hundred yards by the time he gets on his bike.
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That makes Long something like the most extreme version of plenty of weekend warrior triathletes. They've been running since they were toddlers. A good set of lungs, lots of training and a nice bike can make the cycling segment comfortable. But swimming fast is an extremely technical activity that often requires years of practice, preferably from a young age, to develop what swimmers refer to as the ability to 'feel the water.'
Long has spent years trying to get to that point, with multiple swim coaches. Hope springs eternal because triathlons often come down to the run. No one wins the race in the water, but you can lose it there. In a pool at the local YMCA, he looks like an elite swimmer. In a T100 race against some of the fastest swimmers in the sport, not so much.
'I encourage him to try to keep things realistic,' said Lara Gruden, Long's wife and a former competitive triathlete herself. 'He will tell me he really wants to make the pack, but that's not a realistic goal. So how about trying to shrink the gap, because when you want to make the pack and you don't, you feel defeated.'
And yet, a reprieve might arrive this Saturday. The T100 heads to Vancouver and a swim in the ocean — where currents pushing the swimmers can level the field for a slower swimmer like Long and get him closer to the pack, if the current is heading in the right direction.
Also, since Long is so used to swimming alone, he's really good at navigation and finding the most direct route to the transfer station. An ocean swim brings all that into play. The temperature should also work in his favor. He swims best in cold water. Vancouver waters check that box, and the cycling and running courses play into his speed on land. There are lots of rolling hills instead of steep climbs, which are helpful for a bigger athlete who can struggle to drag his body up a steep incline but loves rolling downhill.
So why can't Long swim faster?
That goes back to his childhood in Boulder, Colo., where he was on a junior swim team but never pursued it in any serious way, not after the age of 10. He played football in high school and ran track, and he skied and mountain biked a lot, too. He didn't swim very much for the next nine years until he tore his medial collateral ligament in a ski crash. Swimming with a pull buoy was the first endurance exercise he could do during rehab.
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He was pretty good at it, and he still loved to cycle and was decently fast. His dad suggested he try doing a triathlon. And then the journey began.
He did his first Ironman in 2014. He was just 18. His goal was to break 10 hours for the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and full, 26.2-mile marathon. He finished in 9 hours, 27 minutes, despite being basically clueless about training.
The swim never came easily though, and still doesn't, but Jeff Utsch, his swim coach the past three years, has watched him progress.
'He has a growth mindset, and that is part of what makes him who he is, believing he can accomplish things and setting his goals,' said Utsch, who mainly works with masters swimmers and members of the military. 'He's open. He's humble.'
To swim fast, you have to remove resistance and increase power, which involves becoming more 'slippery' and understanding what being efficient in the water means. Don't use your arms and legs to position your body. Use them for propulsion. Get the hips up by pressing the lungs and head down. Streamline the body and pull. Be like a boat that planes out of the water.
'It doesn't come naturally,' Utsch said. 'But I have seen people not raised swimming do their best times into their early to mid-40s. I think Sam is going to continue to improve as he gains experience.'
That's the physical part. For help with his mind, to learn how to manage swimming in last place without getting depressed, he has turned to Brandon Thielk, a Nashville-based high-performance and life coach who once played independent league baseball and now works with athletes and business leaders.
They get together before the season for several days and then do video sessions and calls throughout the year. Thielk tells Long to go get experiences and then unpack the emotions he felt during races.
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'We're trying to make his system immune to the stress response of the things that emotionally lowered him,' he said. 'It's getting to the core of the issue where he can understand why he feels that way.'
Those issues could be anything. A deeply felt inferiority complex left over from childhood, or anxiety about performing poorly and then not being able to support his family financially.
Thielk says Long has to constantly remind himself that he didn't start swimming at 4 years old, and he can't get lost in a game of comparing himself to competitors who did. He doesn't have to finish the swim feeling like a king. Neutral is just fine.
'Our goal is to really just get him to the place of when he gets out of the water, he's not at an emotional deficit, where his mindset is not negative, so that he can go into attack mode once he gets onto the bike,' Thielk said.
Listening to Long and Gruden and Utsch and Thielk, it's impossible not to draw some life lessons from all of this.
Be kind to yourself. Accept who you are.
Work on your weaknesses, but don't let them define you because you have strengths, too. We're all works in progress.
Long says he has tried to practice a kind of dual existence — his training self and his starting-line self.
In the build-up to a race, it's all about wanting to be a better swimmer and working as hard as he can.
'Then once I actually get to the event itself, and I'm standing on that start line, it's like, 'This is where my swim is, I feel good about the work I've done in my swim, I'm going to execute the best possible swim I can,'' he said. 'And then it's also having this overarching belief in myself as a triathlete.'
And also a human.
(Top photo of Sam Long after taking second place at the Ironman 70.3 North American Championship earlier this month: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images for IRONMAN)

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