I think you were negatively affected more by your choice of race venue and distance, especially as you state that you are new to triathlon. There are plenty of sprint or olympic distance races to choose from if you are not ready for a half-iron swim, in a river with current, known to have chop, subject to bouy drift, at a time of year and a location that is often very hot and unforgiving. You took a risk and it did not pan out for you. I also think you were negatively affected by your decision to not race, way more than by a race director who made a judgement call.

BTW, as I was walking through transition before the race, I saw a guy (maybe you?) rolling his bike out with all his gear over his shoulder. I stopped him and asked if he had a mechanical, if there was something I could do to help. He said "No", and went on to explain that he could not make the swim if he were not allowed to swim in a wetsuit. I suggested he give it a try anyway, let his wave take off and just follow them, knowing that the next wave would not go off for another 8 minutes. He said once again "No", and continued out of the transition area. I was a little surprised that he did not even give it a try, thinking he was concerned about the time cutoff, never dreaming someone would actually use their wetsuit as a personal flotation device in the way one would use a life preserver. I don't think wetsuits are designed to be life preservers, and do not think anyone should rely on one to be just that...JMO.

I do hope you continue your swim training and that you reach a level of competence and confidence which will allow you to try Eagleman next year. By way of encouragement, I started my first triathlon without a swimsuit, and no idea how far a quarter mile swim was. After 30 minutes of scissor kicking sidestroke, would you believe I had no legs left for the bike or run?! After much training, I am a MOP swimmer and working to get better.

Hope to see you out there again, and if you would like any help with your swimming, PM me and I will see what I can do.

I also posted this on it's own thread, but I noticed the Eagleman swim course had a disproportional impact between the faster and slower swimmers due to the slower swimmers actually having to swim a longer “water” distance than the faster swimmers. The reason for this is that on the initial outbound leg we were swimming in the main river channel into a current while on the return leg in the protected cove we basically had no "tailwind" current pushing us back.

Here’s an example using three swimmers on a 2,000M course (2,000M because I believe the course was a little long as well).
#1 Swimmer swims 2:00 mins per 100M.
#2 Swimmer swims 1:45 mins per 100M.
#3 Swimmer swims 1:30 mins per 100M.

On a no current 2000M swim:
#1 Swimmer takes 40 mins (5 mins behind swimmer #2 and 10 mins behind swimmer #3).
#2 Swimmer takes 35 mins (5 mins behind swimmer #3).
#3 Swimmer takes 30 mins.

On a 2000M swim with a little over 1/2 mile/hr head current on 1000M out and no current on 1000M back (approx times):
#1 Swimmer takes 50:45 mins (7:30 mins behind swimmer #2 and 14 mins behind swimmer #3).
#2 Swimmer takes 43:15 mins (6:30 mins behind swimmer #3).
#3 Swimmer takes 36:45 mins.


On a 2000M swim with a little over 1/2 mile/hr head current out and tail current back (approx times):
#1 Swimmer takes 45:45 mins (5:30 mins behind swimmer #2 and 11 mins behind swimmer #3).
#2 Swimmer takes 39:15 mins (5:30 mins behind swimmer #3).
#3 Swimmer takes 33:45 mins.
As you can see there’s a disproportion time difference between the swimmers when you compare the first two swim scenarios. The reason is that swimmer #1 actually swam about 1550M “water distance” on the outbound leg while swimmer #2 swam around 1480 and swimmer #1 swam about 1440. All obviously swam the same distance on return leg w/ no current. On the third scenario w/ head current out and tail current back the fast swimmer advantage faded from the second scenario.

The second scenario is pretty much what happened at the 2010 eagleman, so add a no wet suit scenario and you have a swimmer’s dream come true…. except for 104 plus temps (adjusted w/ humidity) on the later run.

Quite a few folks were DQ's for not making the swim cut off and that's unfortunate given what they dealt with.

*Had they reversed the course then the slower swimmers would have benefited.

And yet no mention of this after following the "Important Swim Course Information" links on the site. CTA really needs to get out of the habit of having important information in three different places saying three slightly different things.

And we'll see if this information is properly advertised for the 2011 events.

I wondered if anyone else noticed that. I stopped for a bit to check out the sighting and found myself only waist deep. I took one step, wondered if that was legal, then kept swimming.

And it turns out to be legal! From section 4.2: "Excluding the bottom, a participant shall not use any inanimate object to gain forward progress." I wonder how far we could have walked and if it would have made a difference for any of us.

If you can touch the bottom it is legal to walk the entire swim
if done under your own power

Great find! And note that 65% relative humidity is very high -- that's a dewpoint of 77. That's probably worse than in Cambridge during the race, but I can't verify because the Choptank buoy doesn't record dewpoint and the hour-by-hour data from the land stations only goes back 3 days -- and there's no land station in Cambridge anyway.

It has nothing to be about being advertised. First, they have to propose in writing to USAT, and get an approval back in writing for any rule mods like this. I sure could not believe they could since why does their opinion on what is safe ignores the USAT data?

Now, what is going to happen next year when so many have put their heads in the sand? Which seems could be USAT and WTC also. Starting in Sept, the cut off is 76. Is this RD all of a sudden now going to say water over 76 has somehow all of a sudden making wearing a wetsuit unsafe? I sure hope nothing happens at his race since how would you ever explain this type of logic in court? I have always commented to USAT that I have assumed that if a race has a USAT certification, that there is a set of rules that apply. As usual, guess this logic holds no water. :o)

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I'm naively assuming that CTA will apply for USAT approval of whatever rules they put in place for 2011 after the 2010 messes and that USAT will go along (not that they're right to).

And your point about 76 vs. 78 is a good one.

I also see that the USAT wetsuit rules are showing up on all the CTA event pages now, and that they've buried a parenthetic "no wetsuits allowed if water temps exceed 78' F" under the "The Race Courses" heading in the Key Race Info. But of course this contradicts the immediately previous statement that "USAT wetsuit rules will be in effect."

Pretty sick. Not the kind of race management I would want to race with. I would get on the phone with USAT and see what is going on. Unless they have an approved written waiver approved by Skip Gilbert, if this is a USAT sanctioned race, they cannot do this. And, if USAT approved this, I would love to see the written safety issue that they approve a variance, since that would imply USAT and WTC have a rule that caused safety issues.
Bottom line, they look like they are just not willing to do the job that the athletes were paying them to do.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I think they really screwed this one up bigtime! The water temperature was probably NOT 79 degrees for the swim. It may have been 79 degrees at the new locations of the yellow bouys AFTER they drifted to shallower (and thus warmer) water. If you swam a straight course to the red bouys, you were probably NOT in 79 degree water.

But even if the water temperature WAS 79 degrees, USAT rules permitted wetsuits to be worn sans prizes and IM slots. The RD announced that the reason they could not be worn because "there was no way to know who wore them and who didn't wear them." Actually, this is silly, because this is done all the time. What they should have announced is that the WTC didn't want to bother to keep a list of those persons who did so because, no doubt, it would have been over half of the persons participating--far too much work. It is laziness, and hubris (we are talking about the WTC after all).

To defend them by saying it was a safety issue is equally silly. In fact, NOT WEARING a wetsuit in a notoriously chopping river at an intersection with an equally choppy estuary increases the likelihood of death (by drowning) FAR MORE than any increase in the heat-induced sickness that might occur either in the water, or subsequently on the run by virtue of wearing a wetsuit in 79 degree water.

Sure, strong swimmers benefitted from this silliness, and that's okay, but I don't understand the logic that if you can't finish a swim within 1:10 without a wetsuit in choppy, current infested river you are a loser, you "picked the wrong race," are a complainer, or are otherwise not worthy of an opinion. Please keep in mind that the vast majority of persons who participate in triathlons have no intentions of ever winning prize money, or getting a Kona slot. Without them, and their enthusiasm for the sport, triathlon would not be a profitable enterprise, and thus the race would not even have existed.

I do feel bad for those who did not finish before the cut-off; it was not their fault EXCEPT in the extreme cases of those who probably wouldn't have finished if they did wear a wetsuit (the 1:25 and longer swimmers). Keep in mind, the water is routinely 10 degrees cooler in June, and I don't think anticipating a temperature that one might expect on September 1st was on anyone's radar. Also, if you followed the course buoy layout, you did about 1.5 miles, not what you train for, and enough added distance to account for much of the DQ list

P.S. I finished the swim feeling good (albeit 26 minutes off my personal best), and had an smokin' run, in spite of WTC laziness :)

Even though I have heard differently from USAT, if it is not in writing, then I must have heard wrong. Here is what I got back from USAT.

"
One factual point to correct: there is no sanction requirement for a written process on how to deal with warmer water temps for awards.

The USAT competitive rule states that athletes may wear suits but aren’t eligible for awards. The RD, on the day, made a determination based upon ambient air/humidity and communication with the medical staff. That is his right and his obligation under the sanction agreement: to make a decision based upon the safety of the participants. Wearing the USAT Risk Manager hat, we’d rather defend this decision than mourn the loss of an athlete succumbing to heat related problems.




Now, based on a number of things that have happened at this and other events, USAT is going to look at all the rules relating to wetsuits and water temps. So, I guess the positive is hopefully in the near future we have more clear rules.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

So, in essence, your stance about Vigorito violating all sorts of rules by disallowing wetsuits, which you have been repeating ad nauseum nonstop in this thread, turns out to be pure crap. I'm wondering if you will send your apologies to Mr. Vigorito.

Maybe the other positive to come out of this is that you might not talk out your ass quite as much.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Sorry, my comments were about a race and a business, nothing about the person. And, really, none of my comments change. They knew the water temp before the race looks like it was over 78, then why did they say at the pre race meeting wetsuits would be allowed. Why did the announcer on race day say the reason no wetsuits is they had no process. Why was their website and what they did not the same. So nope, the concern on how this sanctioned race was run has not changed at all. Now, if the race was not USAT sanctioned, I could care less what they do.

And, since they have never come on this thread to "clear up" the questions, says all I need to know about what really happened.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

From this, can we deduced that if the water temp was 74 degrees and the air temp was 100 with 90% humidity that the RD can say that based on this and his consultation with the medical staff, he can make it non wet-suit period for safety reasons? One can argue that after swimming 1.2 miles and biking 56 miles that it is more dangerous to one's health to run 13.1 miles in the middle of the day with extreme heat and humidity than it is to swim 1.2 miles [edit: with a wetsuit] under 79 degrees weather in the early morning. Under this scenario, the race director can cancel the run and make it an aquavelo? The rule seems quite vague, arbitrary, and really does not benefit anyone.

I guessed this is directed more at the rules as it is written and enforced than anything else.

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__________________________________________________________________________
My marathon PR is "under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."

Yep, I would read that the RD could change anything based on "review of their medical staff". And if an RD thought the temps were too high for swimming, why could they not consider making the bike and run shorter!
Even Chicago Marathon stopped their race in progress because of heat and humidity

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

The USAT competitive rule states that athletes may wear suits but aren’t eligible for awards.

so apparently even though my reasoning; that 'may' means it is up to the RD; made your head hurt - I was in fact spot on.

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Nor do I use punctuation in the way a child sprinkles glitter over a ribbon of glue on construction paper - Trash Talk

Like state before the RD can make a lot of changes without written
permission from USAT. And it doesn't have to be safety related.

That's the point. The RD decided that it would be too inconvenient to form a list of those who decided to wear a wetsuit. It was undeniably MORE UNSAFE to swim in the Choptank without a wetsuit than to wear a wetsuit when the temperature was....what...75 degrees when the swim occurred. Sure, maybe if the swim occurred at 1pm, the story would have been different.

My point was if someone signs up for a race, because of this type
of incident they need to be comfortable swimming the distance of
the race without a wetsuit so if this happens they will not have wasted
the time effort money and would not be putting themselves in danger
if they decide to race without the wetsuit.

I haven't seen/read such controversy over Eagleman since the year they handed out coffee mugs instead of finisher's medals. That was a rough period.

finisher metals are useless coffee mugs are functional

Bob Mina is still not convinced of that:

http://www.bobmina.com/.../Blackwater_2001.htm

That brings back good memories, thanks.