It was short and the current was significant this year. Everyone I talked to had about 1800-1900 yards,

Looking at several folks' swim data on Strava, it seems they shortened the upstream buoy by 200-250 yards.

I had 1800 yards (so ~1650m) on my garmin. That was with pretty solid sighting.

The course was set up different than what was shown on the map. The course map had line between the first two turns almost perpendicular to the shore. Whereas on race day, the first turn was almost a turn around, and the second "turn" was a bit down stream so you swam diagonally towards it instead of straight across.

But the bike is long, so I figure it all worked out in the end.

Thanks for the replies guys. I was hoping I got a little faster in the off season lol. I’ll have to wait for my next race to find out.

Thanks

So this means nobody’s race counted because they didn’t swim the full 1.2 miles? I don’t want to hear any swim PR’s! Or do we only bitch & moan when the bike & run are not the advertised distances?

Yea the bike was almost a mile long by my garmin. I had 56.9 miles.

Ya. I also registered a longer bike. 56.6 on my Garmin. Run was on. Only off by 100 meters. That was probably just me staggering all over the place lol

We bitch and moan about everything. I love the race, but the swim has been very different distances every year I've done it.

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Don't drown. Don't crash. Don't walk.

I had 56.7. Interestingly I only had 12.8 miles for the run. I did notice my watch going off every mile well after the course mile markers.

3rd year doing this race. Here's what I know.

Love this race. I'm not a spectacular swimmer, but great biker and fast runner so it sets up pretty well for me. So well in fact, that I went 1st in the AG by almost 5 minutes (40-44) and 7th amateur. Sunday was my day. Anyway,

Swim is fast. They seem to be less concerned with getting that distance exactly right. They did for Worlds, but every year for the 70.3 it's been off. I came out of the water in 23ish minutes and thought well damn that's a lot faster than I thought, but realized afterwards I'd done about 1700-1800 yards. My thought here is that it didn't seem that we swam that far upstream this year as we did in 2016. And I also thought we made a 90 degree turn and then swam to another buoy after the upstream, but that didn't happen this year. I didn't think the current was that fast because I made the upstream buoy in about 2:00/hundred. The day before I was swimming about 3:45 per hundred before I just gave up.

Bike is fast, but it's long. Probably about 56.7 when it's all said and done. Probably cost me from going under 2:20, but oh well. I had the fastest split in the 40-44 age group so I was happy.

I had the run at 13.0 miles. I think they may have cut us a few feet short going up the hill on the northshore side, but I'll take it.

So, yeah the city is awesome. I live in Atlanta, but we bought a condo in Chattanooga as a get away and also a chance for me go up there and train as much as I want. I highly recommend just taking a weekend in Chattanooga and do some biking, running, and hiking in and around the city. You cannot beat it. And then at night eat ALL the food.

I got 1891 yards, but veered a little too far into Maclellan Island after the turn down stream. Added a few extra yards.

Did you also consider your wetsuit aiding your swim?

I'm a 32 min PR swimmer at the 70.3 distance at Boulder in a wetsuit. I did Choo in 25 minutes in same wetsuit.
That current was awesome. It was like swimming on a surfboard.

The advantage also depends on current speed and outflow up river. The upstream portion wasn't too bad for me, so I would imagine the current wasn't crazy, but that swim was fast.

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Ryan
http://www.SetThePaceTriathlon.com
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