Great new race this weekend in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin – the Pleasant Springs Open Water Challenge. This was the first year. I highly endorse it for next year. .5, 1, 2, and 3 mile distance.
Like a fool, I signed up for the longest race - an open water 3 mile swim. The first 2.5 miles went very well, but, the last 1/2 mile kicked my butt. I was very glad I was not facing a 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run thereafter.
So, it got me thinking – how would increasing the swim to 3 miles impact an Ironman distance race? Are were merely conditioned to swim 2.4 miles b/c of how we train? Is 3 miles really that much harder? Would this thin the field even more? Would this “scare away” people?
Not sure, but, it sure is food for thought. I thought 3 miles would be cake b/c 2.4 miles is not THAT challenging to me. I was wrong.
(As an aside: We biked about 40 miles to the race and 40 miles home. The ride down was pretty easy, so, I do not think it affected my swim much, if at all. Use this information for what its worth.)
I’m certainly not a fish by any stretch of the imagination but I don’t think it would matter much. I’ve trained for races where the swim leg is twice the IM distance and the only change I made in my training was extending the length of my weekly long swim by 15 minutes. This is just my opinion, but going from 2.4 to 3.0 miles wouldn’t change much.
the good swimmers would be further ahead of the weak swimmers, but in IM racing by 5-600m the field is pretty much set in the elite ranks and you are still going to get bashed lots in the AG ranks, but for a longer period of time.
Negligible. Increasing the swim by 25% would add only an additional 2-3% or so of the the total IM time, if you figure that the IM swim is around 10% +/- 2-3 % of the total IM race time for most people.
what if they handed everyone kickboards and you were only allowed to kick for 2.4 miles. I could very well be satan in disguise for thinking up something so horribly painful.