But paul, according to your geometry you literally do NOT have to sight or follow anyone's feet.

If navigation is so unimportant that course correction is not needed, by your argument, you don't even need to SEE anything on the course at all. Meaning you do NOT need to follow feet or sight AT ALL. Literally just close your eyes, no goggles needed, and just swim at your target. You'll know you've arrived when you hit sand, and then you'll only be 10m off your target laterally after 1000m of swimming. (Ok, 200m if it's a 2000m race, which we all know you can cover by foot on the beach a lot faster than swimming laterally.)

How am I misunderstanding this part of your argument.

No I am saying just follow the fastest feet and don't worry if that person is off. You can check every 50m but likely this person is not very far off the buoy line. It is faster follow the fast feet than trying to pick the straightest line. And once you get good, you dont even have to look up at them and drop your hips. Keep the read down and you can feel if you are in their draft, on the left or on right.

I've been consistently cruising around 1:35/100m in the pool. I was anticipating my recent half-iron distance swim to be around that pace (non-wetsuit). However, what I did was very, very far away from that. I swam a 1:45 pace.

Times:
OWS without wetsuit - 36:33 (this year) - 1:54/100m
OWS with wetsuit - 30:22 (last year) - 1:35/100m
Pool training pace without a wetsuit - 1:35/100m
Pool with a wetsuit - 1:27/100m. (1200m TT with wetsuit in 17:24 at similar RPE as 70.3 swim pace).

What gives? I'm as fast as I am in the pool as I am in open water with a wetsuit. Without a wetsuit in the OW, I flounder. I'm thinking it's my sighting, and my feet dropping quite a bit.

How much slower usually can I expect to be in open water? I've been racing for 7 years and I consistently suck in open water. Thoughts? Tips?

On the downside, turns also mean this extended period with no oxygen too spending all that time under water.
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This is why we practice turns. Because after a bit of practice, the 2-3 seconds of holding your breath (which doesn't qualify as 'extended' in my book) takes less and less of a hit on your swim to the point where you don't even notice it, especially at aerobic levels. Later on, this translates well into an open water skill to protect against the angst of a wave or swimmer splash that causes you to miss a breath in the cycle.

Hey just one point about swimming straight. Swimming straight is almost unimportant as long as you take the tightest rurn around buoys.

Let me do some math for you. Let's say two swimmers are 200m from a turn buoy and there is a 100m buoy along the way

Swimmee A veers to his left and ends up swimmiing 10m left of the in between buoy at 100m. Then he realizes he is off and has to course correct to the turn buoy. Let's assume Swimmer B goes perfectly straight to the 100m buoy and then to the 200m turn buoy where him and Swimmers A converge and bump into each other right at the right turn at the buoy

• Swimmer B travels exactly 200m
• Swimmer A goes 2 x square root(10**2 + 100**2) = 200.99m

Every zig zag along the way you can add up the respective right angle triangle hyptonuses relative to the straight line swimmer who is going on the long edge of the right angled triangle. Its basically no difference.

You're way better off drafting a 1:25/100m zig zagging swimmer than 1:32/100m straight line swimmer. If you can draft the 1:25 swimmer, you likely get to that turn buoy 10 or so seconds faster.

I know exactly how this works because as a slightly faster swimmer in my age group locally, I will veer wide so people don't think it is worth drafting me, and then I just end up shedding these guys so they can't get a free ride and when I get to bigger races, I'll just follow faster swimmers regardless of line.

Now if you turn the buoys wide that is a disaster. Even arriving at a turn buoy 5-10m to its left, you're adding big time doing a wide radius. If you turn a buoy 7m wide versus right on the buoy, you will travel 7 meters further. This can easily happen on a crowded turn. you want to make sure the guy you are following is aiming right on a tight turn. You do two buoys like that and you can add 20m to your swim course. That's probably 20ish seconds for a lot of people. If you do that 7 times in a 2 loop swim, suddenly you have lost 1.5 minutes or more if your turns are bad.

So in summary, the line between buoys makes almost no diff....follow the fastest feet. At the buoys take the tightest turn. Do not arrive at any turn buoy wide.

Hey just one point about swimming straight. Swimming straight is almost unimportant as long as you take the tightest rurn around buoys.

Let me do some math for you. Let's say two swimmers are 200m from a turn buoy and there is a 100m buoy along the way

Swimmee A veers to his left and ends up swimmiing 10m left of the in between buoy at 100m. Then he realizes he is off and has to course correct to the turn buoy. Let's assume Swimmer B goes perfectly straight to the 100m buoy and then to the 200m turn buoy where him and Swimmers A converge and bump into each other right at the right turn at the buoy

• Swimmer B travels exactly 200m
• Swimmer A goes 2 x square root(10**2 + 100**2) = 200.99m

Every zig zag along the way you can add up the respective right angle triangle hyptonuses relative to the straight line swimmer who is going on the long edge of the right angled triangle. Its basically no difference.

You're way better off drafting a 1:25/100m zig zagging swimmer than 1:32/100m straight line swimmer. If you can draft the 1:25 swimmer, you likely get to that turn buoy 10 or so seconds faster.

I know exactly how this works because as a slightly faster swimmer in my age group locally, I will veer wide so people don't think it is worth drafting me, and then I just end up shedding these guys so they can't get a free ride and when I get to bigger races, I'll just follow faster swimmers regardless of line.

Now if you turn the buoys wide that is a disaster. Even arriving at a turn buoy 5-10m to its left, you're adding big time doing a wide radius. If you turn a buoy 7m wide versus right on the buoy, you will travel 7 meters further. This can easily happen on a crowded turn. you want to make sure the guy you are following is aiming right on a tight turn. You do two buoys like that and you can add 20m to your swim course. That's probably 20ish seconds for a lot of people. If you do that 7 times in a 2 loop swim, suddenly you have lost 1.5 minutes or more if your turns are bad.

So in summary, the line between buoys makes almost no diff....follow the fastest feet. At the buoys take the tightest turn. Do not arrive at any turn buoy wide.

I buy that if you follow a 45 degree angle swimmer that you are going to do extra. But we have peripheral vision to know if we are going 45 degrees to perpendicular from rest of field. Largely most of the field moves reasonably.

My context may be skewed due to swimming at the front of my age group with decent swimmers however in mass start Ironman events or even when my wave starts way back and I swim through most of the field I rarely see these 45 degree to perpendicular swimmers. Just following feet and using peripheral vision when breathing is enough to generally know if you are within decent tolerances. What you don't want to do is keep lifting your head, dropping hips and putting on the brakes to keep over sighting. It's not worth the extra aerobic workload.