Survival of the Mills is an SOS (Survival of the Shawangunks) knockoff. With their blessings.
https://www.sostriathlon.com/


B 30, R 4.5, Swim 1.1, R 5, Swim .5, Run 8, Swim .5, Run .7 (straight up steep trail to Skytop finish)

SOS has been going on for 35 years now, and sells out faster than ever!

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float , hammer , and jog

I agree it would be a fun change. Imagine the start. It would be like a high school championship cross-country race, with everyone in a big field sprinting to get to the trail first so they didn't get stuck behind slower runners.

Steve

Was thinking it might be cool to have a run, swim, bike, run race to get field separation right away.

At the Olympic distance it would be

Run 5K
Swim
Bike
Run 5K

This could be done for any triathlon simply be splitting the run distance into two halves.

This might actually make the runners who "wait" for the run work even harder to create some separation on the first run because the second run would be half of what they are used to running.

Probably would make for smaller groups together during the swim and bike. More jockeying around and wondering "Where is so and so?"

Maybe like cross country through the woods, swim the lake, bike the roads and run the woods to finish.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I can’t remember the name, it was 20+ years ago, the bike was last

A little weird for sure.

They made it safer by requiring single file the last quarter mile or so with 10 min penalty for dangerous/aggressive riding

On the contrary, the swim is underrated and should be longer. Olympic distance is the fairest race and the swim time is still around half that of the run. So if we used the Olympic ratio for long distance with a 40k run we's have a 6k swim. But then we'd have fewer triathletes.

Also, wetsuit temp limit should be much lower, but then there'd be almost no triathletes!

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

You know there is a sport for people who don't want to swim? Nothing wrong with duathlon.

There, solved it for you.

Haha I can imagine, unfortunately there are only about 70 competitors registered right now I believe so things will most likely spread out quite a bit..

It's in Belgium, first time I believe I've seen a race of this format so it'll be interesting.

Maybe bike and run in your wettie??? Cool to hear about races in Belgium. :)

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

Don't disagree with you, except on the wetsuits. Some of us are under 150 lbs, not acclimated and not pros. While I prefer non wetsuit races (and have yet to race in a wetsuit) if I were to race a cold swim then I'd have to have one.

In hindsight, I wish I had used over emphasized rather than over rated. If the swim was "buried" as the second or third event there would be less emphasis on good swimmers because rather than getting the publicity for leading the race, we would be talking about if they had made up the time they lost.

Something else to consider, the new transition of putting the goggles on correctly without losing time.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

You missed the point. I like swimming in there. If it was second or third, then the good swimmers might never be leading the race. and not getting much attention from the announcers or audience.

There, tried to explain it again for you.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I think that would make more people drown or get strokes in the LD, as we know its a thing already as it is.

Besides its my opinion that if anything swimming used to be largely underemphasized. Its the shortest leg of the three and so many people thought for years that it was okay to basically suck throughout the swim and then make up for it during the bike and the run. For some years now as AG fields are getting denser and denser we're seeing a trend to the ideal triathlete where people are pretty much sound in every discipline.

Ok, so you simply don't want others to have the attention of the speakers or audience? Very noble of you that you think a good runner- or biker-triathlete (but clearly bad swimmer) should have that attention once in a while.

Personally I don't care. It is the overall finish time that counts and it's more fun to advance to the front than vice versa during a race. I sometimes feel bad for the swimmers and gladly give them their minute of fame, they will be passed a lot in the rest of the race. Then again most of the triathletes that swim faster than me are also pretty decent bikers and (a little less) runners.

In non-drafting events I don't think the sequence changes the overall outcome. In drafting it does as you do not make the pack you want. But hey, I should probably focus on myself instead of others and learn to swim better if I want to make the pack in draft legal races.

Or I could avoid draft legal racing (which I don't do, I just do what I can in the race), just as you could choose to do a duatlon once in a while if you want te be in front from the start.

Different formats of triathlon can be nice, simply because it's something different and the change itself is cool to do. Do not try to change the sequence simply because you want to be called out by the speaker. That's an ego thingy.

FWIW I am a far better runner than I am swimmer and biker and frequently have top 10 (or even top 3) run times on local races. I can run a 35 minute 10k off the bike but will probably never swim faster than 14 minutes over 1k.

That wouldn't be fair if you couldn't see them.