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Wave Starts at Kona - How did it go?
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Any feedback from the wave starts at kona in relation to the swimming/start experience and then how the drafting played out ?
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Re: Wave Starts at Kona - How did it go? [Gilliga] [ In reply to ]
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This was my first Kona so I cant compare to past races but I've done 16 other IMs and liked this start. Waves were big enough to form packs but small enough to spread out and get up to speed within a minute or two. I saw blatant drafting in the front AG bike packs but not much in most of the AG field. Not even close to Texas a few years ago.
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Re: Wave Starts at Kona - How did it go? [Gilliga] [ In reply to ]
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My experience was much better than expected.

- Better head to head race with AG
- Some strategy needed on passing slower swimmers in waves before you
- Strong swimmers were not able to gut it out the first 400m to jump on even faster packs to swim 55-57
- Some typical draft packs on bike of 5-10 that refs dinged
- No draft Packs of 50+ riders
- Still people either dont care or dont know what a legal pass is..... I screamed at many passing me to not shove themselves in but to go to next gap that was large enough
- Later start resulted in more wind on bike - 10 min can make a big difference
- Aid stations we less dicey given more spread out field

Much improved and will miss the Iconic Mass Start Pictures....
Last edited by: scca_ita: Oct 15, 19 18:39
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Re: Wave Starts at Kona - How did it go? [Gilliga] [ In reply to ]
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I have done a mass start WTC and a couple of rolling starts and this years Kona. And they are no comparison to AG starts in shorter races.

What I learned in the past, is that if you were in a mass start, you had to swim around a few, because optimists, etc, seeded themselves high, but really only a few. On a rolling start, much the same thing happened, a few optimists were ahead and a few pessimists were behind. Not a lot of difference than a mass start. The Kona wave start was weird. I was carefull to stay to the back of my wave (men over 50). Hadn't managed to sort out ocean wave action, during the week before the race, so I hung back. I was passed by the first faster swimmers perhaps 1200m in, then again at the halfway, again just after the 2nd turn, then it just became continuous. I already knew Legacy swimmers that could catch me. Because of the shear numbers, there's no going around, mostly they just went through.

There is no common etiquette for this, so until that is worked out, if it ever is, it could be a problem for many, because they (the slower groups) have no means to take themselves out of the melee. I'm a 1:10 to 1:20 swimmer (although not last Saturday). Looking at the stats it's easy to see that there are about 400 women swimmers (without the legacy group) who passed me. And although I had a "shite" swim there were still about 350 men ahead of me that were slower. So it was a bit more like a water polo game than a straight swim.

It needs a little sorting.
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