IM Lake Placid is my target race this year, and my first IM. I understand the reasoning behind seeding yourself according to your ability, and usually try to do that, but I have a few questions for experienced Ironpeople regarding the mass start:
Do you seed yourself as far forward as possible to take advantage of faster swimmers passing(and hopefully draft them), or according to your projected swim time, to avoid getting swam over?
What do other people seem to do?
If you seed yourself according to your expected swim time, have you found yourself stuck in a huge crowd, unable to get around them?
My reasons for asking are as follows: I did 4 tri’s last year, 2 intl’s and two 1/2’s, and they were all wave starts. My experience in the 35-39 male AG was that many of the guys would be trying to push each other out of the way to get as far forward as possible regardless of ability, while others, like me, would hang back a ways. In one extreme case, all 135 guys were trying to be first when the gun went off, such that most of us spent a minute or more treading water until there was enough room to actually swim. In all cases, some people would pass me, while I would end up passing others.
I am not the fastest swimmer(best 1/2 split: ~35:50, ocean swim) but want to do as well as I can without spending the whole swim stacked up behind people slower than me. Having seen some IM starts, I wonder if that’s even possible, since much of the swim looks like a huge school of fish moving around the course. I also don’t want to be in the front row knowing that I will be swimming 1 hour+.
I appreciate any advice or insight that you can offer, since I expect that starting with 1800+ other people will be a slightly different experience than starting with 100.
My experience is that too many people try to get to the front and go out like Mark Spitz for the first 200yds then blow and clog up the course for everyone else. I have tried hanging back and moving forward through the course of the race but end up swimming over and around many guys recovering from the overly enthusiastic start. I guess it is just human nature to want to be up front but I wish more people would seed themselves. I have done other races where on the entry form they asked for your best 1500m time. the swim was mass start but people were seeded with colored swim caps by their times. Obviously many people fibbed(can you believe that?) but it did do a pretty decent job of sorting things out. I think some sort of seeding based on previous Ironman swim times would be fair. If you have never done an ironman you would have to start in the back or petition the race director for an exemption. (Maybe some kind of open water swim for time earlier in the race week) All that being said, I will hopefully be on the start line in Lake Placid. Last time there I swam :58. If you start in front of me be prepared to go under that or I will swim over you
That’s what I have seen too(people seeding themselves too fast). I don’t want to be a complete tool, out on the front knowing that my swim will be MOP, but I also don’t want to get stalled out behind the folks who blow up after 3 minutes and then swim a lot slower than me. I know it’s mostly a “you pays your money and takes your chances” situation, but I figured that your experiences would better help me prepare for the race.
As far as staying out of your way goes. I have an idea: If all the Slowtwitchers at Lake Placid wear your slowtwitch buffs on your head before the race starts, I promise I won’t get in front of you for the swim. Everyone else is on their own. ;p
Oh, wait, there isn’t a slowtwitch buff, is there? Dan!!!
Like paul said there are too many people that have no idea how to seed themselves of do it improperly. It’s just like a road race you see the 40 something 50 lb over wt. person lined up at the start line. My advice is to perhaps seed yourself a little faster than you thing you can swim and let things happen. You don’t want to be one in front cloging up things and you don’t want to be in back behind everyone. Last summer I did IM austria and got caught up front about 3 rows back in a start from the beach I held my own and swam 1:01. I did IM calif 2002 which was a 2 loop and thought I was in a bar fight and actually thought of dropping out after the 1st loop not because I misseeded myself but it was too many people in a confined space plus the course was long because the marine corp measured it in nautical miles. Best of Luck and just do what feels right for you on that day. mike p.
hi olddude - a question on IM Austria swim start. I’m doing it this year, my first IM, so this thread was very timely. Where do you suggest I start for the swim? I figure I’ll be doing it in about 1:15, possibly faster as I hear it’s a fast course. I’d appreciate any insight, thanks.
I still like the pre race swim for seed time. They require everyone to be there on Thursday anyway. Why not have anyone without an Ironman swim time on their resume show up at the lake and swim a 1/4 for time. Based on either your previous IM swim time or your 1/4 test you get a colored cap to seed you in the start area. If you think your swimming is much improved over your last IM, then you are welcome to do the 1/4 for time to get a new seeding.
“I am not the fastest swimmer(best 1/2 split: ~35:50, ocean swim)…”
You are also not the worst swimmer by a long shot. Ok, here’s my $0.02 worth on THIS swim based on my experience last year. This swim is a little unique. Mirror Lake is really deep. So deep that the buoys are not anchored to the bottom. Instead there are two cables about 5’ deep and maybe 50’ apart (they are parallel) and they both run the entire length of the lake. The buoys are anchored to these wires. This is important because they act as lane lines, to a point.
Here’s how I should of played it last year. Stack-up to the right side of the starting line. Everyone else heads to those wires right off the starting line. That’s what I did… Bad move. It’s like swimming in a washing machine. I lost time fighting instead of swimming. Sight as usual, but be slightly (15 yards or so) to the right of the buoy line. Things thin out after the 1st turn around, so pick your pigeon there, and draft you butt off.
I’ll play it smarter this year. Hopefully it won’t rain all day. Blisters trashed my run… more like walk/limp the last 13 miles.
Paul I like your thinking! I wonder if that would help things in Hawaii and save the Pro women from getting clobbered by us reasonably adept age group swimmers (54Kona, 52IMC). I feel bad realizing I’ve just swam over some woman who is out there trying to pay the mortgage after 100yds, already making up the 20 yd head start.
It would also save issues like the chaos of Vineman several years ago where Russ wanted Bradford Rex to cross the line first but knew that he wasn’t going to win by the swim wave margin (3 or 5min, I don’t recall) so he had the 35-39 group go off before the 30-34 group. There were 106 people in the wave ahead of us. I came out of the water 4th overall that morning, and a friend in the same wave was 3rd. (thanks for the tow JoeL!) That means we same through and over 103 people. If that was their first Ironman, it’s gotta suck getting dunked once, twice, or more their first time out. The speed differencial was so great we’d be on top of people before we knew it. I was just there to do the swim, bike, and 3 miles of the run to check out my fitness going into IMCanada. So you can bet we were cruising the swim!
Yes, please seed yourself accordingly. The good swimmers don’t want to swim over you, but will if they have to, and your swim is going to be faster if you aren’t getting dunked and pummelled. You can always line up to the outside and slowly slide in towards the center as the race becomes narrower line near the 500-1000yd marker. That should slot you into you a nice group of people swimming your pace. Then you can leverage them the rest of the way around the course only to roll forward with 300yds to go to beat the pack into the transition area and save yourself some of the chaos.
If you are a 35 min half ironmans swimmer, then your likely swim time in LP will be in the 1:08 to 1:10 range. If you look at last year’s results, the 649th swimmer was 1:08.01 and the 755th swimmer was 1:10.00. So basically what you got is a swimmer exiting the water every second at that point and you are basically one third the way down in the field. So on race morning, just seed yourself 1/3 the way up the field and just take it easy. It is a really long day and +/- 2 min on the swim will have no impact on your day. Better yet, take it easy on the swim and do like I do and make up the time in T1. The transition is the easiest way to take off time and there is no way your T1 time should be that far off the pros. At LP, around 4 min in T1 is a good time. It’s easier to cut a 8 min T1 to 4 min than to take 4 min off your swim time. My swim was like 350th overall but my T1 was 40th overall at 4:09 (of course, that was the only thing I really did fast on that day, but I have had faster days at LP with good transitions).
