An iron-man triathlon starts with a 2.4-mile swim, continues with a 112-mile bicycle race, and finishes with a 26.2-mile run. No matter how strong a swimmer an individual is, they will still lose the race if they are terrible cyclists or slow runners. So when athletes train for a triathlon, it makes no sense for those who are already exceptional at swimming, but unskilled at cycling or running, to spend most of their training time in the pool. They may improve their swim time by a small increment, but their weakness in the other events will still cause them to lose the race. And when predicting who is most likely to win the race, it makes little sense to look just at an individual’s swim times.

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