What's It Like To Swim In Trainers? Arishita Reveals All Over His Two Triathlon Firsts

Michael Arishita produced two firsts in Super League racing and possibly triathlon anywhere – swimming with shoes on and then swimming with shoes stuffed down his tri-suit.

The American Qualifier knew he was on the cusp of falling 90 seconds behind and being eliminated after the first round of swim-bike-run in his Semi-Final at Super League Malta.

And so he took the drastic decision not to waste time taking his trainers off in transition and dived into the water still wearing them.

He quickly realised that it didn’t make for easy swimming and so flipped onto his back to remove them and stuffed them down the front of his tri-suit.

But as that filled with water and created even more drag things got much harder, and he was eliminated after the swim.

Arishita has no regrets but hopes he will have improved enough by the time the rest of the 2019/20 Championship Series gets going that he won’t have to produce a repeat performance.

He said:

“I looked up and saw the clock was at 1:22 and so I made a little stutter and decided if I wanted to do the swim then I may as well go ahead with the shoes.

“It was brutal. Kicking is not my speciality and with shoes on it was way harder.

“I stopped at the first buoy and stuck them down my suit but that was arguably worse so I’m not sure what have been better, but I made it through one more discipline and I guess I got a little TV time.

“I would do the same thing again. I think I would have been out after the swim anyway and if I hadn’t have done it I might not have even made it to the swim so why not?

“Hopefully I don’t have to do it next year.”