To try and get this back on course and off the Penticton / CdA / Whistler 70.3/ discussion. I am fine with the mass start, but I hope they also make it an Australian exit( I think that's the name) so they can see who actually swims both loops of the course rather than seeds in the back and then waits for the 1st group to come around. I have no doubt this happens.

That's really too bad. I love the mass start experience. For me, it's part of the sport, part of the allure, and challenge. I inadvertently started dead front and centre at whistler in '14. Got out there, looked around, realized there were 1500 people behind me and absolutely no one in front of me and thought "shit, I better move back a bit" then immediately the canon went off. Thought I would get mowed down, but it was actually the cleanest swim I've ever had. Absolutely no contact the first few hundred metres, and only a light brush once in a while throughout the course. The first stretch is long enough the buoys weren't even that crowded.

Alta is a great swim course. Clean, clear lake, relatively easy sighting (making the first left turn the sun was blinding, other then that it was smooth sailing).

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Long Chile was a silly place.

....almost certain that this happened at least twice as a now banned F40-44 athlete from IMC magically swam ~ 56 min the two years she did that race and if I have done my sleuth work correctly never broke 32 min in a half IM. For some reason she was capable of elevating her swim speed but only on courses (Whistler) where you don't have to exit the water after loop 1. I don't know why they don't have a loop 1 exit/loop2 entry timing mat.

I am sure too. I did it in 2013 and volunteered in a kayak on the swim course last year. Out at the first turn I saw a couple younger looking dudes I thought looked to be in pretty good shape ,with good form, expensive wet suit, ( I know that means nothing) etc that looked to be going very slow /trying to go slow, at the end of the race before the group came back around. I was too cold and it was raining too hard for me to remember or care their #'s and check for sure later, but I have a hunch. It would be easy ( I think) to put one off to the S. of the now exit and have them run out and off the dog area dock and back in. It needs to happen.

boo ~ nothing better than mass starts