Unless you believe that guy cheated, the course was pretty much spot on. As someone pointed out he swam 51 in hawaii on a slowish year there, so what you would expect from a guy at altitude in fresh water. He probably can swim 47 to 48 under ideal conditions.

As to the rest, I believe i explained it. Virtually all people suck at altitude swimming, even experienced swimmers. Unless you absolutely know the score, your pace you should be swimming, and you are acclimated, you are going to lose time. Even the leader lost time, but he was apparently ready to do the high swim. And the absence of pros also takes away a lot of the sub hour swims. I would say that even well trained swimmers in the sub hour range would lose between 3 to 7 minutes just from the altitude, some a lot more. Go back and look at the amount of people the broke 1;06 or so, and see if that doesn't come closer to the number that usually break an hour(in a non wetsuit swim of course)

Agreed, I race at 6000ft every year in Utah for the XTERRA US champs and live at sea level, and there my swims always are 3-5 min slower (1500m) so Boulder was both slower for me because of the altitude, and because I am not a pure swimmer and so lose speed when I am out of the wetsuit. The added dimension was the wetsuit crowd who made it pure chaos for 3/4 of the swim and caused me to adjust my swim/move/stop to see what the fuck just hit me/etc. Overall, I would say 3-8min for altitude, 3-6min for wetsuit and 1-2min for the chaos factor.

Jack

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
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Agree. The first year that IMLP was not WS legal (2011; and everyone was caught off guard) they used had a results book and it separated the results. Athlinks still indicates this for that year. We need to get a movement to, in order or preference:

1) Go to a single temperature and eliminate the "optional" zone. Optional isn't fair and it isn't safer. I wish they had just left it at 78 and enforced that for all. #OneTemp

2) Extend the gap if optional stays. I'd say 30 minutes, though maybe in two loop swims this creates equal or more chaos.

3) Separate the results. At least get rid of the ego PR wearer that swims straight up the back of non-WS athletes.

Ah, thanks, did not realize Goncalves was 1st amateur OOW at Kona last year; 15 sec slower than AP, a very studly swim:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

OK, well, i will defer to your experience. I guess i've just become accustomed to seeing IMs with 200-300 guys under an hour for the swim, so 24 struck me as very odd. I would guess that at least some of these folks will take their swim training a little more seriously in the future, espec for a race at altitude:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

And also keep in mind that the fewer faster swimmers there are, it becomes a snowball effect on slow times. You need big groups to pull big numbers under an hour, so I bet that this race had a lot more "gaps" in the bigger group finishes, and a lot of straggler type finishes too. You would get the same type of spread in a heavy surf/chop condition swim. Hard for big groups to form, thus a lot not getting that all important pack time advantage.

Ya, I guess the combo of no pro's, wetsuit-optional, and altitude produced conditions with much slower swims compared to races with pro's, wetsuits, and low altitude, and then that fact produced the "snowball effect" with many fewer fast packs forming. Actually, if you define "fast" as under 55, then there were zero fast packs, just Rafael doing his solo swim:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."