http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...;;page=unread#unread

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Then why would a great swimmer choose to do a current aided race?

I'd just call that bad decision making.

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Dev,
A tad slower than last year but not enough to make a difference. The WTC does not care about the athlete who is performance oriented like most of us who have raced for 35 years, They figure we will come anyway because we are driven to race big races. They are more interested in participants. The swim is a large factor in their decision on where to go. last year the last swim finish was 1:45. This will be more the trend than with a normal swim. It sucks, coming from a running background I was forced to learn how to swim and put the work in to accomplish improvement. The WTC mission statement is "filling dreams" The other sad thing with the WTC decision to do this is most of their participants are on what I call the 4 year plan
Year 1:sprints
Year: 2 Olympic and 1 half ironman
Year :3 : Full Ironman
Year: 4: BIKE FOR SALE!!!!!!


The real athletes are around for a lot longer. It is sad that most of these participants are more familiar with the race announcer and his tag line than who wins these things at the highest level.


futrmultisports.com

who cares. there are plenty of people who are 1 and done. doesn't bother me. not everyone is cut from the same cloth and it takes true love of the sport to be in it for many years. i'll be starting my 5th 140.6 next saturday and at least 2-3 times i've said i'm done with long course. then a few months go by and i'm back in the suck.

some people are looking for the challenge of a tough course, some people just want to say they completed the distance.

i personally feel finishing an ironman within the 17 hour time frame is not much of an accomplishment (for a majority of people). if more people knew how to train properly for this distance i would suspect times to drop by at least an hour across the board.

I agree with that for the most part 17 hours is for most people a D minus grade. That said helping the finishers case along with swims that dramatically change the dynamic for those that want to be competitive and get a Kona spot the change in the course is a huge deal. The WTC knows the limitations of their market and are catering to it rather than offering a fair challenge. Nobody says it has to be the hardest thing but there is a difference of fair and overwhelmingly easy swim courses.




futrmultisports.com

idk. you can pick and choose the course you race.

IMFL, IMAZ, IMMD are all easy bike courses, IMLP is arguably an easy swim as well.

if swimming was my strong suit and i wanted to go to kona i would pick a difficult swim, if i was a strong cyclist and kona was a priority i would pick a difficult bike course followed by a flatter run course.

wtc offers a pretty good variety of courses.

if folks truly want a balanced race they would sign up for that race that is equal times in each discipline.

If you don't like the swim, then don't do the race. Why do you need to poop in other people's cheerios?

That's crazy. I assume that a lot of peeps STILL wore the crutches...errr.....ummm.....wetsuits?

Seconded. Are we now also going to poop on people who ride flat IM bike courses? What if there's mostly a headwind in a race? I really don't understand the sentiment.

The difference between the first and last Kona qualifier is usually between 15 and 30 minutes in most age groups. This swim won't cost you a Kona slot unless you are on the razor's edge of getting one anyway. It's still the same course for everyone, hardly a "huge deal".

I was originally a one and done Ironman. That was 15 years ago and I'm doing Kona on a Legacy slot in a couple of weeks.

Duh -how is this worse than bke packs?

Good grief. Are we really going to have this post every year for Chattanooga? I did the race last year. Yes, the swim is down river so it's fast, just like the Augusta 70.3 and I'm sure there are other races with down river swims. It was non-wetsuit (wetsuit optional) last year and this year . The bike course is 116 miles so it pretty much balances out and the run is hilly and challenging. Every ironman is different. If it bothers you so much that the Chattnooga swim is is fast then don't do the race. If you think it's so easy then maybe you should do the race to see for yourself. As a wise friend of mine said, any ironman is hard if you race it.

As much as people whine and cry about the Chatt swim, my average time per hundred was actually faster at Augusta than Chattanooga. At Augusta you get wetsuits. But I guess since Augusta is not a full, people don't complain about it.

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Proud Member of Chris McDonald's 2018 Big Sexy Race Team "That which doesn't kill me, will only make me stronger"
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Yeah, pretty well, you'll get the same post every year about current aided swims or draft packs at Florida. People who care about overall sport fairness will tend to not like these scenarios. I'm not downplaying the overall accomplishment of anyone, because as I said in the first post, it seems like the run is pretty darn tough, but at the end of the day, there is an expectation for what should be the minimum requirements for an Ironman. If you want a current aided swim, also let's put people on treadmills on the back of pickup trucks and drive them toward the finish line. They are still covering the "distance" but from the perspective of physics, this type of run, like a down river swim is assisted by outside energy.

In any case, just to be clear, I'm not calling participants on this as they do whatever course WTC sets. I'm calling WTC on it.

I'd like to blame WTC for this one, but unless they promised that the swim course/conditions wouldn't be like 2014, folks who signed up for the race this year should have been aware this could happen again. I do feel bad for someone like Gennari, a longtime WTC customer, who couldn't take full advantage of his swim talent at the IM in his home state.

same thing happens at NYC olympic triathlon. There is a rise of downhill running races in the US also. the bar just keeps dropping. Meanwhile in europe everything goes up hill (norseman, etc) and we scratch our heads every year why the europeans dominate championship races.

I thought Bruce was in 50-54 now, but he's still in 45-49

He has come off the bike in 1st. with 42 swim + 5:09 bike. A 4 hour run gets him to sub 10 with 2 transitions. I hope that is enough to get him a KQ even if he can't use the full swim advantage. The short swim not only closes his swim advantage, but the less time EVERYONE spends in the water, the less "TSS" from the swim for everyone, and this helps less efficient swimmers more. Hope he hangs in there, but his T2 looks a bit slow for an experienced racer. Slow T2's in IM's tend to not be great indicators, but hopefully he was just slow vs fatigued.

Looking back at Brian Myrick's posts, he did say they were targeting 6000-9000 cfm for the IM, and the screen shot I saw this morning said a predicted value of 6500. So, I guess that this year's conditions are about what we should expect. Nice to know: I'll plan on less swim prep.

Bruce did the race last year. He did the 70.3. He also does the Olympic almost every year. He knows that river swims fast EVERY single time. I suspect he cared more about racing close to home than anything else.

Why would you feel sorry for him. He knew what he was signing up for.

Does anybody know if it was first come, first serve for the swim start or if they had recommended swim time ranges? The swim at Tahoe last weekend seemed to go super smoothly for both the full and half by seeding fastest to slowest. Then again, there were ~1000 in each race, so significantly less crowded.

It's a bummer that he had to sacrifice his greatest tri skill to race an IM close to home. He's been racing IM since at least '97, when he was first overall out of the water in Kona, so I'm sure he's disappointed that when they finally got an IM race in TN, the swim is what it is.

I agree with a few others. I'm a strong cyclist, so I'll prefer harder bike courses, or at least windy ones to level the playing field with the lighter "runners". I'm an average swimmer so I'll prefer a more difficult swim to again level the playing field with the fast runners.

I think finish time from every course need sot be placed in the context of the terrain and conditions. I don't however think a flat bike course is less of an IM, just a different challenge and focus.

But we're complaining about a 12' short swim course for the pointy end. Where as a flat bike course is a solid 25 minutes faster than a hillier one. 2x the difference. Run courses only seem ot add maybe 5' or so, more in that average times go up and less disciplined runner are more likely to blow up on hilly run courses.

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boo f***ing hoo.

Chatt is know for a fast swim? So no surprise there...what's you point?