hopefully there is a way they can augment the swim course for 2015, as I was looking at this for my fall IM. I'll take a fast swim but with this much of an aided current I'd be almost embarrassed to admit to racing IM Choo.

Not the same as wind. More akin to a downhill course.

The logic goes roughly like this. If I sat in a rubber ring and drank a margarita at the swim start, I apparently would have made the cutoff time, or pretty close to it, while actually swimming 0 miles. If I was an infinitely fast swimmer, I would have had to have swum the full 2.4 miles. With the 2 extreme outlier cases, there is a difference of 2.4 miles in actual swim distance. Now for people within those outlier bounds, you will be somewhere along the continuum of swimming 0 and 2.4

I think the difference between this event and b2b is that most folks don't sign up for an IM knowing that the swim is going to be downhill.

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Would we embrace a world where WTC puts out a race that is 2.4-74-26.2 and calls it an Ironman. Or 2.4-112-18? Because that's effectively what they've done with IMChoo, but with the swim being short instead. Why should that be embraced?

What about riding to T2 in an 40 man pack for majority of bike leg? Does that cheapen 95% of IM's?

ETA: I'm 100% in agreement this "cheapens" the IM distance, but so does 95% of the bike legs in IM's. So I'm more along the lines of, if everyone knows it's an aided swim, what's the issue. We all accept that bike packs will occur at IM FL, but we don't bitch that it somehow affects the legacy of IM, why? Or why does only this affect it?

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

Of course it does. I don't understand your point.

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Do the bike packs at IMFL affect the winner of the race? I'm pretty sure when Starky went 4 hours on the bike and won the race that he was not riding in a pack. At least the argument can be made that for the money positions, the draftfest races still maintain integrity.

Oh my point was, this idea that this cheapens the IM name/event is no worse than 95% of the bike courses for IM events. Yes it's a silly fast swim, but if we all are cool with IM FL being a draftfest, not sure why this cant be the same for this event? I think we all agree when you talk about IM Chat it comes with an * by it.

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

So because undesirable shit happens on the bike, it's cool to let the rest of the race go to hell too? Are you seriously using THAT argument?

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Where do you get your 95% number ? Have you done an Ironman and observed 95% of the people drafting? It is entirely possible to ride legal even on congested courses if you want, and I'll maintain more than 5 people out of 100 are trying to ride with integrity. I'd put the number at >50% riding clean. The problem with the 'downhill swim course' is that even if you actually want to do the full effort, you cannot. If people are drafting around you at IM Florida, you can still ride clean. One of my buddies has Kona qual'd at Florida and Placid. Unlike some people who have 60 min deltas, there is barely 20 min delta between his bike times at those two events and his swims are within 1-2 min. If he raced at Choo, his swim would be 20 min faster and he's be pissed.

the reality is that people need to chill the F out.

some ironmans are more difficult than others. who said they all have to be the same? some marathons are more difficult than others. boston is probably one of the easiest marathons, but if you say you ran boston people all of a sudden have more "respect" for you. especially if you BQ.

i've done 4 iron distance races. placid, wisconsin, cozumel and challence ac. most people would expect me to say placid or wisconsin was the most difficult, they were not. cozumel was the most difficult, for me that is.

you don't like the easy race? don't do it. anyone who follows ironman racing, races more than 1 ironman etc knows which ones the hard ones are. i'm annoyed that i will never experience IMStG, but that's cus i want a tough race. i have 2 friends that did florida as their first ironman. i know the course is a joke compared to placid, but it doesn't make either of them any less of a finisher than i.

john

Hey ken....I gotta dodge you since you're winning races out right now! Plus I have a bit of a challenge facing me on 10/11.....

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Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

There's hard. There's easy. And then there's short. Again, would it be a-ok for WTC to put on a 2.4-74-26.2 event and sell it as an Ironman?

No, I've simply said, if we all know/understand that this is going to be an swim aided swim. I'm not really sure what the issue is. Everyone who races on this particular day has the same conditions, so no one is really getting cheated. If your saying the top swimmers are getting cheated, I guess we have to use this same theory every single time a wetsuit is used on a swim...but we really don't do that do we? We simply accept that the wetsuit is going to favor the weaker swimmers far more than the strong swimmers, so that's my thoughts on this race. Going forward we know this is a downhill swim. Either accept it, or don't and get it changed. But it's not going to "cheapen" the IM brand anymore than what their current practices are with other things in how they run their races.

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

All I know is if I was a strong swimmer who attended this race in the hopes of KQ, shelling out thousands to be there, I'd be pissed.

Edit, and they don't have the same conditions because not everyone has to swim the same distance. Faster swimmers had to swim farther.

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I would disagree here and I am a relatively strong swimmer and personally am not sure I will do IM chatt as I prefer a harder swim. But They did cover the 2.4 miles of swimming. Was it aided and does it need an asterisk... Yes. But using the analogy that if the current is .6mph that they swam 1.8 miles or whatever is the same as saying if the bike course is an out and back and on the out you have a tail wind of 8mph but the winds calm down as you turn around and now you only have a headwind of 6mph then you only biked 102 miles assuming the bike took you five hours... No you still covered the full 112 you just got lucky and where aided more on the out then penalized on the back...Just like next year the current could be less cause the dam might be closed off more.... But that's just my two cents.

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Yes and now all you strong swimmers learned something. Don't do IM Chat if that's really your only strength, but also don't race IM FL cus the draftpacks will get you there. So likely go race IM Tahoe where it's likely one of the fairest courses.

So that's sorta my whole point. Now we all know IM Chat is the equavilent of an downhill marathon. Cute to say you did the distance, but we all "know" what it really is. If you go back to that race and bitch about it, it's on you now.

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

I agree, but that doesn't help me this year, does it?

Not that it matters to me a lot, I'm likely never going to do an IM, but crap like this doesn't really make me want to go out to a WTC event.

It isn't like shifting winds, or draft packs. The course layout is well within the organizers control, and we all know that shit happens that will favour certain competitors over others, but stuff like this is fairly major and should not happen. It's the equivalent of measuring out an 18 mile run course instead of a 26.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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The swim had a current, just as predicted. I am a 1:30/100yd swimmer and swam 1:20/100yd today.

The weather was really nice…cloud cover and cool. I didn't feel warm on the bike until mile 100. The course has 5300ft of elevation gain so it's definitely not flat. Did not feel much wind….I think the conditions were good and that made for a fast bike. What also made for a fast bike for some was several reported pelotons. I did not see any, but I did get stuck in very crowded spots and had to surge to get out of them. I was fearful of a wreck. It was easy to get a draft if you chose to do so.

Half of the run is easy, half of the run is a bitch. I would have never predicted the winning time….conditons were great. For the AG's, we did get some light rain on the run which made things really nice there too. Its a good course and the city was great. The dicks who threw tacks on the road should have tacks inserted to their balls. The city really supports the race, it's going to be a popular one for years. The conditions were ideal for a fast time. The swim is what it is. Like someone else said, some courses have easy runs or an easy bike. This one has an easy swim. Remove the cloud cover and add a few degrees of warmth and it would have been a different story.

The 95% was reference to the percentage of IM races that have packs of "drafting" in their races (Arizona, Florida, Melbourne, Texas, Vegas, Mont Tremblant; very few races actually are predominantly clean). Yes you can legally race without the pack, but I will wager, that your race is going to be affected by them. You've said it yourself many times when talking about how to deal with the draft packs:
(Paraphrasing here)
"Sit up, let them go ahead and then go about your business".

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

I cant answer if the swim was known ahead of time to be aided or not (or advertised as such). My guess would be it wasn't advertised as a downhill swim to the degree it was? I don't think WTC would go the way of B2B and push for the easy swim to be "advertised" as an lazy river swim (it works for B2B, because that's how they need to be able to compete with the WTC brand).

I will say though on draft packs. Draft packs and swim course are directly within the organizers control. You put 3000 people on the courses that these races are, and your going to get drafting. So a RD should be directly responsible for any course design they implement. The solution however to fixing the draft problem has to much negative economic consequences, thus you'll never see IM actually implement much in terms of changing drafting. They certainly aren't going to put 1600 people only on the courses, and they aren't going to put 100 officials on the course. So I kinda see IM Chat as simply another IM FL. We all know IM Fl is a draftfest, we all know now this race is a lazy river. Both have some huge integrity issues, so not sure why 1 should be more frowned upon than the other.

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

Ok. How often have you claimed to do an Ironman, but in fact your bike was assisted by a tailwind? How many of your Ironman finishes do you mark with an asterisk because of tailwind?

As you know, in track and field, for world record purposes, there are limits on tailwind -- however, even if there is a tailwind, they still call it 100 meters. Do you think that when there is a tailwind on the track, they should lengthen the course?

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

There is no point. No Ironman wins the race in the swim and almost no serious Ironman has lost it in the swim. The swim is merely the price of admission to the real race.

Who cares if the swim takes thirty minutes or an hour. The men and women who are champions will define themselves with 10 kilometers left in the run.

So yea, who cares.

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I was shocked at the number of competitors who chose to wear a wetsuit (and start last). Exactly how bad a swimmer do you have to be to need a wetsuit at this race?

At the race briefing, they said that an IM employee floated on his back the length of the course in 1:30.