Did anyone swim the HITS Palm Springs 1/2 or Olympic distance swims this weekend with a GPS watch? Just curious what you got for distances.
Due to side to side inaccuracy of the track, if it doesn’t lose signal, GPS will almost always come up long, this is much worse in the swim.
A gps reading is going to be off to one side or the other by 1 or 2 meters, or some non-zero number at any rate. When cruising along at 20 kph, in 10 seconds you travel 50 meters. The track being off to the side by 1 meter only adds 1 mm to the distance calculated for those ten seconds.
But when swimming at 3 kph you only go 8.3 meters in those same ten seconds. So if the readings are off to the side by 1 meter, you added 3 mm, which is now close to 1%. That’s also assuming that the accuracy is within 1 meter while swimming, which it isn’t, not even close if it’s on your wrist.
So before you send in your complaint about the swim distance, keep that in mind.
I got 2206 yards. Seemed right on for an otherwise screwed up race. T2 was a couple of minutes standing around waiting for shoes. The run course was screwed the way you kept coming back to the finish. I waited around for an hour to get my bike back. But the swim was right on.
I was about 7 minutes slower in the 1/2 swim, I attribute 3-4 min to freezing my ass off. Most everyone I talked to was 5-7 minutes slow
Kevin, I wasn’t complaining about the swim distances. I was just curious because I didn’t swim with a watch. So what is your guestimation on the accuracy (+/- %) of a gps watch on your wrist for measuring swim dastance?
Thanks, I had similar issues with the 2 transitions. It took a while to get my bag and nobody was available to take my bike so I just leaned it against the tent and went on. My bike was back at T1 when I finished, but my helmet and shoes didn’t show up until quite a while later.
Ya, swimming while numb is probably the answer. I know several people who swam the Sprint and Olympic this morning and they all had much slower than normal times.
I was 5 slow on a distance I always seem to get the same time. My watch was pretty off to, while not accurate, it seemed way off. I did cramp bad, but I kept swimming. So I was wondering if it was long myself. The run was long to.
The t2 wasn’t the best idea. My bag was there waiting for me, but nobody was there to take my bike for a few seconds. I actually had to say hey is somebody taking my bike? Not that it really impacted my race greatly, but if I was within seconds of a PR, I would have been pissed. Overall I thought the race was OK, but you can’t have parts subject to other peoples error in a race. I was just happy to be racing again after my accident in September, so maybe I’m more tolerant at this point. Man that water was cold though.
Water didn’t feel that cold to me, but I got in there to get used to it before the start. I liked the mass half wave start but it sure took a long time to get through the mass of people.
My Garmin had 13.1 for the run and 55.6 for the bike so I think the distances were good. Last year the run was a mile off (12.1) so I think they were paying attention this year to the run distance, albeit while designing a very poor run course change.
Did anyone swim the HITS Palm Springs 1/2 or Olympic distance swims this weekend with a GPS watch? Just curious what you got for distances.
2196 according to my watch for the 1/2 swim…
Just curious, what did you get a 4 min penalty for?
I figured they would have have been spit on this year. Just must have been the watch. Just usually it underestimates distance. To add, I didn’t find the cold water unpleasant once we started going. But sitting still in the water sucked a little. I hate wetsuits in general as intend to ever heat in them and in already prone to leg cramps. So I don’t think the cold alone caused it, but maybe overcompensating with my legs To take work off my recently recovered shoulder might have been a factor. Looking at the data, I may have been aiming for a faster swim then average until the cramps kicked in in the last 3rd. The solution would have been to swim more, but limited by too much volume on a broken shoulder. I would do the race again. Even knowing the water would be that cold.
Now that I’m looking at results, I’m curious if I haven’t had enough coffee this morning or what but 6th place time doesn’t add up in how it’s faster than my time(7th).
Sounds like the distance was right on. The 4 min penalty was for drafting. I can go into a long explanation of how it happened, but it really doesn’t matter. I was in the zone and paid the price…l will now wait to get raked over the coals by the rest of my Slowtwitch friends 
CDriver, I don’t know what happened with the posted results. My overall time is correct, but all of my split times are way off and added together would be more than 30 minutes higher than the total time. When they posted the results onsite, they had my correct split times. I sent an email this morning to inquire about that.
After the first few minutes in the water, I didn’t find the swim to be too uncomfortable. My problem was in T1. My hands were so numb that my fingers weren’t working and I couldn’t get dressed or even get my chin strap buckled. I spent over 6 minutes in T1 and it was so damn frustrating!
So that was you? Just kidding. I only saw one example of obvious drafting and those refs were making rounds with good frequency.
On the bike, yes, but there was no one watching the run. I saw lots of people with headphones on. And did anyone else notice there was no timing mat in the run turnaround on the out-n-back. I don’t think that cop sitting in her car was making sure people were going all the way and turning around and there were no race officials or volunteers past the aid station, and really, people could just go into the porta-potty wait a few seconds and then head back never going to the turnaround. I never even thought about course cutting and timing mats until I started reading about all the cheaters on this forum and letsrun.
I did the oly and my time was about 8 minutes slower than all the other times I have swam that distance. I did not have my gps for distance and felt like I swam great so I am only guessing it was long. I really don’t care as we all had to swim the same distance.
As for the cold, it was at first but felt fine once we got going. No complaints here. My son on the other hand had the opposite feeling. He was shivering in T1 for about 5 minutes before he could get going again.
There were some issues with the races but overall my entire family raced and we thought it was a great event.
The run course definitely could have been improved. No timing mat at the turn around is a major over site but I’m surprised more people are not complaining about their bikes. Did anyone else have concerns with seeing all the bikes just laying against each other as they were being transported back to T1?
As for the cold, my feet hurt so bad running from the water back to T1. The asphalt was like pins and needles to me.