I did the race today for the third time and I felt awesome. Passing all sorts of people. When I finished my watch said I swam 1.4 miles and my time was personal worst by 4 minutes. I probably just sucked it up today but I asked many people and they all thought it was long. Anyone else?
With the huge number of sub 24 minute swims without even having Andy Potts in the race, I wondered if it was a bit short.
Hugh
1). Because of loss of, then acquiring signal with arm in then out of water, not nearly as accurate as land.
2). Most GPS in water read long. (per reviews i have read and own experience)
3). Unless you swim in a perfectly straight line, it will be long.
I PR’ed my swim. Not thinking it came off long to me… Pros went about as expected as well. Maybe if you had to swim through lots of previous waves? I was surprised by the amount of first timers at the finish line. There was lots of back/breast strokers
Unless you wore the watch under your swim cap to maintain consistent GPS, the margin for error is huge. So you could have swam 1.2 miles, or 1.6 miles.
Nope, wore it on the wrist. So I’m probably going all over the place when I’m swimming. Pretty discouraging. I did PR on the bike but I wish had those 4 minutes back.
My 910XT read 1.44 miles at SG today, but my time was exactly what I expected for 1.2. I notice the accuracy for short swims seems decent, but I never get a good measurement for anything beyond a mile.
My swim was 4min long too but I knew I was having a crappy swim.
Kinda hoping you were right on the long swim.
I know. What kills me is that I have done this course two times before and never felt like I did today. I guess the clock doesn’t lie. I asked four random people at the race finish and they all said the exact thing. “I thought I was having the swim of my life and my time was long by 3 to four minutes.” thus my post here. I thought maybe the change in the course caused the discrepancy. But who knows, sounds like I just need to HTFU. I will be back next year. Hopefully better prepared.
Mine was about 150 meters long. My track and my sighting was pretty much dead on with only 2 times that I was a wee bit off course. My time was about 2 to 3 minutes longer than usual, which would correspond with the 150M give or take a few. I felt normal, not the best swim ever, but all my swims are within 3 minutes of each other, no matter what the conditions are.
Mines showed long and it was interesting to see the track my Garmin had versus my Iolite. The Iolite by the way worked flawlessly I was right off every buoy and did not sight at all once I had each segment in. My time was a 2 minutes slower than expected but my Garmin pace per 100 was faster than I would normally do. My iolite showed 2134 meters to top of exit ramp my Garmin showed 2296 to waters edge. Honestly that is pretty dang close as I am sure the environment is not condusive to accuracy
What kind of open water swimming do you normally do?
Could it be that fairly smooth water with a lot of other folks swimmer a bit slower than you, made it feel like you were swimming much faster?
I know that after swimming in the ocean a lot, these type of reservoir/ lake swims always feel so fast with no current or much chop to speak of.
jake
Forget about all the garmin distances that you and others got, just use the pro swim times to tell if the course was accurate or not. And from the looks of it, it seems spot on. All other kinds of reasons you might have swam slow( as compared to what exactly?), but being a long course does not seem to be one of them…
I’m with Monty on this one
As well, I had a number of athletes racing and nobody swam a time that was slower than expected other than one guy admittedly “swam like a lost puppy” … none of them wore a Garmin
Forget about all the garmin distances that you and others got, just use the pro swim times to tell if the course was accurate or not. And from the looks of it, it seems spot on. All other kinds of reasons you might have swam slow( as compared to what exactly?), but being a long course does not seem to be one of them…
Actually I’m convinced that I am swimming in every direction but straight. I have done this race three timea and I compared my relative placing in AG and gender and it got significantly worse. If the course was long then I would have seen no change or a relative improvement. Bottom line is my swim sucked. I could tell I was further away from the buoys than usual but I felt I had more open water and I really thought I was going fairly straight. As a matter of fact I purposefully sighted every 12 strokes instead of every six as I have done in the past hoping it would gain me speed. What it gained me was inaccuracy.
I have an Olympic in one month and I hope to implement lessons learned. Stick to the buoys, sight more often AND keep my form and stroke count.
Forget about all the garmin distances that you and others got, just use the pro swim times to tell if the course was accurate or not. And from the looks of it, it seems spot on. All other kinds of reasons you might have swam slow( as compared to what exactly?), but being a long course does not seem to be one of them…
Pretty much every race I have a crappy swim where Potts is there, I think “long swim!” then see his 22:00 time… errr… never mind 
Forget about all the garmin distances that you and others got, just use the pro swim times to tell if the course was accurate or not. And from the looks of it, it seems spot on. All other kinds of reasons you might have swam slow( as compared to what exactly?), but being a long course does not seem to be one of them…
/end discussion
know. What kills me is that I have done this course two times before and never felt like I did today. I guess the clock doesn’t lie. I asked four random people at the race finish and they all said the exact thing. “I thought I was having the swim of my life and my time was long by 3 to four minutes.” thus my post here. I thought maybe the change in the course caused the discrepancy. But who knows, sounds like I just need to HTFU. I will be back next year. Hopefully better prepared.
Not sure what my issue was since I was fine at Oside 5 weeks ago. Oside had some bump at the harbor entrance, it’s generally a tougher swim. I haven’t been ocean swimming but I didn’t for Oside so I don’t think it was that. My guess is I just went out to hard and just never settled into my swim pace.
BTW this was SG #3 for me too.
Also I agree with Dave and Mark…I’m sure it was us