Contact the organisers as there may be more to it than you think. Perhaps it is an insurance/permit issue. Perhaps it is out of the control of the race director. Stranger things have happened.

Maybe but it is the ocean.....how can they not allow swimming???

Because,in some cases the liability would fall on the race director as soon as everyone in checked into transition on race morning.So they technically,in some cases, would have to patrol the ocean during the warm up as well.That may screw up the preparations for securing the actual swim course.

I would not be at all surprised if it is some "official" issue on the part of the local council.

If someone has a heart attack you should sue the insurance company for being dumb.

Agree that it's stupid. If I was a competitor I'd like to know who to blame so I could aim my anger appropriately. Maybe it's their fault, maybe someone wouldn't give them permits. Either way someone is causing an unnecessarily unsafe situation.

If they are going to send that out in bold letters then I hope they also included some dry land warm up tips and some swim safe guidelines about how to approach the situation.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

What do we know about swim warm-ups and pre-race swims helping to prevent cardiac events? (serious question).

Given the time you generally have to stand around all wet between the end of “warmups” and the actual start of the race, I often find them counterproductive.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

There are dry land type of warm ups that can get your cardio worked up and swim specific dry land warm ups. Take some bands out there and work that. If your really worried, just use the opening seconds of the swim to get adjusted once in the water and don't start on the first row.

Is it ideal? No but it's adaptability.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

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In 1995 I raced in the Queensland Masters Games on the Gold Coast in Oz.The transition was about 200m from the swim start and there was no chance to warm up in the canal that was the swim course.I got out my swim bands and much to the amusement and heckling from a bunch of my "friends" I did a swim band session while the last briefing was held.We then wandered down to the swim start and off we went.

I was first out of the water,first off the bike and got run down to finish second overall.At the awards presentation all of the people who were laughing at me for being a swim-geek started asking me where they could get some swim bands.As we Aussies are so happy to do to our mates,I told them to fuck off. :-)

Seriously this is not stupid. An organizer would very likely be deemed liable if an athlete warming up before the race got into difficulty and drowned when there was no safety cover in place. Please don't say that loved ones wouldn't sue in those circumstances because we all know what kind of society we live in now. If you need to warm up go for a jog, use stretch cords and do some dynamic stretching.

what happens if they drown in the race?

I like having a little swim warmup before most races, but I don't need it. It's on me, to control my own intensity at the race start in order to reduce the risk of cardiac event to a level acceptable to me. Personal responsibility. Your outrage is amusing.

The safety cover during the race would hopefully save a life but if not it would mitigate litigation against the organiser.

Suppose, issue found during warm ups is there a heaps of people swimming out an in at different times. More worried about getting clocked as people seem to want to do super sprints in their warm ups.

Makes sense to me, sort of.

I was at a sea swim event last weekend and they made a concerted effort to keep swimmers away from the water until just before the start when we were all fed through a small gate, our numbers taken, counted, and then let into the sea to line up ready for the hooter.

It was made clear to us that this was so they could keep a 100% precise idea of how many went in and how many came out again and so they knew how many corpses they'd have to spend the afternoon looking for.

This is very common in Europe and for exemple in Vichy it was forbidden to warm up in water!
I always assumed that it was for safety / insurance purpose since with the chip system today, race organiser can know how many people are in the water at any given time!
This wouldnt be possible if half of the field would be in the water before going on timing mat!

I don't disagree with your statement about personal responsibility however I'm glad you find it amusing that a race director is willing to unnecessarily put people at risk.
You can warm up all you want it is not the same.

Conduct a little experiment put your heart rate monitor on make sure you're nice and warm turn the shower on to roughly whatever a swim temperature might be let's for shitz and giggles say mid-70s then stand in that water just allowed to hit your face just your face and watch what happens to your heart rate. Now add to that you're in a prone position your body has literally changed positions and how your heart's going to handle that.
Then think about the factory wearing wetsuit and your diaphragm in a lot of cases cant expand quite the same as it typically can.
then throw adrenaline in from the race start whether you fire out at full speed or not they're still adrenaline and it's like throwing gasoline on a fire.

So all you people that say you can just go for a warm up a jog and do your band workout I don't dispute that there is a benefit to that however it is not the same.
All that stuff warms up the muscles it does not prepare you for the shock of hitting the water.

agreed thats dumb

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2024: Bevoman, Galveston, Alcatraz, Marble Falls, Santa Cruz

Well done.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

To control for this the race organizer can have a mandatory corral after planned warmups. Almost all of the races ive done does a pre count of the racers who are in the corral and if someone checked in, but isn't in the corral will get scratched or they try to get them to the corral.

These same races only allow the swimmers to warm up in a very limited area, usually in the roped off area of the lake or closer than the first sighting buoys.

There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence, but what to do is all over the place. This is where USAT really needs to step up with some guidance. Death during the swim, while rare, is a very serious issue and while there are many conjectures as to why, there’s nothing conclusive. A general consensus is gelling around a rapid increase in heart rate (as most deaths seem to occur early or mid way into the swim), to help lessen the impact many believe a warm up to be essential. I do a preswim if allowed or at least a warm up run, or both. I also have been starting the swim at an easy pace and then working up my speed. Latest thing I read, through a link on another thread, indicated that around 70% of those who died had no pre-existing conditions or symptoms. If anything the warmup gets me thinking about the race and calms me down.

I am not outraged, but I agree that it is seriously stupid. Would I be surprised; not at all. Might there be a reason behind the decision; of course. Is it beyond stupid; absolutely!

All moot, they canceled the swim.

pffft, that's not going to stop me from being outraged.