I understand that the swim was replaced by a run (tough luck for John Kenny and Laurie Hug, among others); any specific reason given other than the usual occurrence with an urban swim following lots of rain? Also, was there some issue with the timing (results seem to be there)? Was the first run a “real” 5K or 3 miles or what?
lots or rain carried lots of debris into the river, making it physically unsafe to swim in. the sprint on saturday had red zone bacterial counts because of runoff, but no real debris. lars made the call at about 6am on sunday morning.
the first run was true 5k but accenture et al. weren’t set up initially to report on the results. the final standings at lin-mark.com are up now though.
Disappointing as it was, cancelling the swim was the right call. With 5 inches of rain overnight, the water was muddy brown with lots of floating debris and tree branches, etc. I imagine the bacteria count was probably off the chart as well. Can’t control the weather. Lars Beck still put on a good event.
just by looking at the river, i was glad to not be swimming in it.
bummed to not swim, of course, but didn’t question the decision. the river looked like chocolate milk; and there was a lot of stuff floating in it.
so, i don’t know what the bacteria count was or anything, but the yecch factor was quite high. and i’m guessing that the debris is also a safety factor.
it was a 5K/40K/10K duathlon.
there was a sprint triathlon on saturday, which did go off as a tri.
I know that David Thompson of gearwestbike.com won the men’s race on a very nice bike. 
Herbert
Litespeed
David is absolutely tearing it up this year…
Yes, it’s nice to go into T1 fresh with a big lead as opposed to tired and a minute back. I saw the water in the morning and I’d have to say that I’ve swum in dirtier places before, namely Gardener’s Basin in Atlantic City where you can typically see oil floating at the surface. That being said, a race director has liability issues and I probably would have made the same call in his shoes. I would have rather seen the swim leg held in one the endless pools that was on display instead of the 5K run. It was a good training day for me at least.
The first 5K was accurate, but I felt like the 10K was long according to the mile markers… or maybe my legs were just heavy from the extra 5K of running at the start.
Yes, it’s nice to go into T1 fresh with a big lead as opposed to tired and a minute back. I saw the water in the morning and I’d have to say that I’ve swum in dirtier places before, namely Gardener’s Basin in Atlantic City where you can typically see oil floating at the surface. That being said, a race director has liability issues and I probably would have made the same call in his shoes. I would have rather seen the swim leg held in one the endless pools that was on display instead of the 5K run. It was a good training day for me at least.
The first 5K was accurate, but I felt like the 10K was long according to the mile markers… or maybe my legs were just heavy from the extra 5K of running at the start.
It also would have been interesting to see you swim against Eric Limkemann. Did you meet him?
We cancelled the Olympic swim because of the large amount of debris (leaves, plant matter, tree branches, etc. - not “trash”) that came down river from the heavy rains north and west of the city Friday night through Sunday midnight or so (these are areas with streams that feed the river). This debris hadn’t “arrived” by Sat. am so the Sprint swim on Sat. went on as planned (I swam it myself with the second wave).
By Sun early am the river was 2-3’ higher than on Sat am (even though there was very little rain in the city Sat. night) and the debis had “arrived”.
Athlete safety being #1, it was an obvious call once we were out on the river in a boat. And yes, my friend Laurie Hug was disappointed.
As for 10K run - its “spot on” as the run course was USATF certified.
See you in '07!
Alan Morrison
Race co-founder (and slow but steady triathlete)
Negative. Also, we were in different waves, so it would have been tough to watch us race.
Hey Alan. Even though I suck at swimming it’s not the same ‘feel’ as a du. Given the choice I would rather swim (with a wetsuit!) but the RD made the right call. That would have been one ugly swim. Unfortunately the only two hours of the weekend it didn’t rain was during the race, it would have been nice to have a cooling mist. It was nice to be 20 minutes behind the winner at the finish, usually I’m that far behind coming out of the water.
Great event IMO.