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Chattanooga Swim
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This has probably been discussed at great length, but I thought I'd ask anyway: how strong is that downstream current in the IM Chattanooga swim leg? I ask because I saw the swim results of a local triathlete. The participant does have a college swim background, but hasn't had that kind of focus in at least a decade. The time today was 3 minutes faster than my best (I did a :55:xx), and I'm having trouble believing that split was from a flat course.

I remember that the swim leg of the NYC tri had competitors swimming a 1500m swim a minute faster than the pool world record in the 1500. Is it a similar situation in TN?

It seems to me like someone could almost float downstream in the official cut-off of 2:20. If it weren't illegal, I'm positive I could use a kick board and go under 1:40.
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Re: Chattanooga Swim [140triguy] [ In reply to ]
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Yes, it has been discussed at great, great length. Beaten to death actually.

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Re: Chattanooga Swim [140triguy] [ In reply to ]
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My coach who was second out of the water, was about 10-12 min faster than usual.

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Re: Chattanooga Swim [Sbradley11] [ In reply to ]
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Sorry about the dead horse.
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Re: Chattanooga Swim [140triguy] [ In reply to ]
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Discharge from the dam was cut down to about 6,700 cfs today. IIRC 2014 it was upwards of 17k-20k cfs.
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Re: Chattanooga Swim [ffmedic84] [ In reply to ]
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ffmedic84 wrote:
Discharge from the dam was cut down to about 6,700 cfs today. IIRC 2014 it was upwards of 17k-20k cfs.

Current isn't linear with flow rate. The river get deeper and wider, and current does increase, but probably not as much as you think. It depends on river levels downstream and the water level prior to reducing the flow.

The mississippi river when I checked once had about 3x the flow normally than Niagara falls. I think it was over 5x at flood stage. It's never really moving all that fast even at flood stage, but its depth is over 2x normal.

But a civil engineer could probably give a more accurate answer.


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Re: Chattanooga Swim [140triguy] [ In reply to ]
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140triguy wrote:
This has probably been discussed at great length, but I thought I'd ask anyway: how strong is that downstream current in the IM Chattanooga swim leg? I ask because I saw the swim results of a local triathlete. The participant does have a college swim background, but hasn't had that kind of focus in at least a decade. The time today was 3 minutes faster than my best (I did a :55:xx), and I'm having trouble believing that split was from a flat course.
I remember that the swim leg of the NYC tri had competitors swimming a 1500m swim a minute faster than the pool world record in the 1500. Is it a similar situation in TN?
It seems to me like someone could almost float downstream in the official cut-off of 2:20. If it weren't illegal, I'm positive I could use a kick board and go under 1:40.

It looks like the fastest pro swim was 41:25 by Eric Limkemann, which is prob about 6-7 min faster than he'd do on a non-current assisted swim. It appears that the current was less strong than it was in '14 when the fastest swim was 38:06 by Brandon Barrett with Limkemann right behind him in 38:10. Oh, and you'll love how many ST-ers rationalized it: "well, the bike was 4 miles longer than 112 so that made up for the shorter swim." :)


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