Will soon race an ironman with a rolling start - first come first serve
I usually swim 1:10 give or take and bike just above 5 hrs
I guess people will roughly seed them selves as the fast swimmers don’t want to be slowed down and the slow ones do not want to be swum over
So trying to line up around 25 percentile makes sense?
However, guess one need to be there a good 30 min before start?
my only experience with a rolling start was this year at Lake Placid. your race may be set up differently.
LP had people on the beach holding up signs with swim times: 1:00 and under, 1:00 to 1:10, 1:10 to 1:20, etc. They were about 20 to 25 metres apart. We swimmers were not single file, more like a column that was eight to ten people wide. I was able to swim in the warm-up area until ten minutes before the age-group start and easily walked to where i wanted to be in the line-up, and could have joined the line a few minutes later.
good luck in your race.
It’s ironman Chattanooga
As far as I can read there will be no corrals or self seeding, it’s first come first serve
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It’s ironman Chattanooga
As far as I can read there will be no corrals or self seeding, it’s first come first serve
I think you have two options (I am doing the same race)……catch the first bus @ 4:30 with everyone who fears missing the cutoff and be at the front of the line……or show up when you show up and be wherever you are. I am going with the latter. Would love clear water, but it is a long day and I don’t want to sit around all morning waiting. Looks like you are a very fast cyclist……so you will be constantly passing people if you are start late.
You will want to notice how much room there is to move around/up. At IMLP, there was limited room in the corrals to move up. If you get there late as I did, you may have a hard time making it your predicated time marker.
cut the line
It’s ironman Chattanooga
As far as I can read there will be no corrals or self seeding, it’s first come first serve
.
Eric
I love your comments
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What George said. just go under the sign for 1:10. There should be signs even though they are not printing that now. Best ever and calmest race start i had was IMLP rolling start 2013…the jockying for position already happens on land in civility when we can talk to each other rather than swimming on top of each other in the water!!! it really is awesome.
Will soon race an ironman with a rolling start - first come first serve
I usually swim 1:10 give or take and bike just above 5 hrs
I guess people will roughly seed them selves as the fast swimmers don’t want to be slowed down and the slow ones do not want to be swum over
So trying to line up around 25 percentile makes sense?
However, guess one need to be there a good 30 min before start?
with a 5 hr bike, you are in the upper tier of the AG cyclists. i wonder if you’d get a benefit by starting with a later “wave”, meandering thru with your 1:10, and then having many many people to slingshot around once you’re on your bike. i’ve seen some good-biking posters say that the legal drafting helped them.
Will soon race an ironman with a rolling start - first come first serve
I usually swim 1:10 give or take and bike just above 5 hrs
I guess people will roughly seed them selves as the fast swimmers don’t want to be slowed down and the slow ones do not want to be swum over
So trying to line up around 25 percentile makes sense?
However, guess one need to be there a good 30 min before start?
with a 5 hr bike, you are in the upper tier of the AG cyclists. i wonder if you’d get a benefit by starting with a later “wave”, meandering thru with your 1:10, and then having many many people to slingshot around once you’re on your bike. i’ve seen some good-biking posters say that the legal drafting helped them.
It happened to me at ironman Texas where I spent the first half passing many people. Didn’t feel that it helped me because it was hard to get into a steady rythm and mentally took a lot of focus screaming on your left constantly
If it’s like the Chatt Waterfront swim, there was no real issue in the swim. They started everyone off very quickly right after each other and the river was plenty wide to swim in without getting bottled up behind people. That said, I was in the 200s out of 1,000?
CW’s bike was a cluster IMO, but there course will be different so maybe not so bad, plus a bigger spread of people with the vastly different swim times.
If I were still doing this race, I’m not sure what I’d do. Catching that first bus and then sitting or standing around for so long doesn’t sound that appealing.
I never say on your left. I just pass. Too many people freak out and swerve left. If I’m coming 5 mph faster that gets sketchy
I’d agree - draft benefit from passing lots of slower cyclists is limited, particularly if you are putting down a FOP bike split. The speed difference often means you aren’t spending a ton of time in the draft zone, and are generally biking through lots of congestion (large / slower groups riding several wide) at the start of the ride. I swim slowly, so don’t spend much time near the front on the bike, but would expect consistent legal distance draft would provide similar benefit.
cut the line
It’s ironman Chattanooga
As far as I can read there will be no corrals or self seeding, it’s first come first serve
Who do you think you are? An AWA?
At the waterfront tri you were given a number and seeded by the estimated swim time you gave. People were then staged and sent off one after another by their number. IM Chattanooga is first come first serve there will be no staging by numbers. From the freak out on the FB page by the non swimmers about the race starting at 7:40, the front of the race is going to be loaded with bad swimmers. It has the potential to be a clusterf$ck. I’m afraid a lot of people are going to have there day start off in s very bad way.
I never say on your left. I just pass. Too many people freak out and swerve left. If I’m coming 5 mph faster that gets sketchy
Agreed. I’m also leery of triathletes with less than stellar bike handling skills.
At the waterfront tri you were given a number and seeded by the estimated swim time you gave. People were then staged and sent off one after another by their number. IM Chattanooga is first come first serve there will be no staging by numbers. From the freak out on the FB page by the non swimmers about the race starting at 7:40, the front of the race is going to be loaded with bad swimmers. It has the potential to be a clusterf$ck. I’m afraid a lot of people are going to have there day start off in s very bad way.
This first come first serve thing is simply stupid. We need to place some calls to WTC and ask them to set it up like the proper rolling start at IMLP or Boulder. Are you guys sure they are doing the ‘line up at 4 am/camp out overnite’ system for an early spot in line?
I read all this stuff and have been thinking about this for over a year. We have not advertised anything about the start! People are guessing at this point. (Note- I was wrong on this, the FAQ does state first come first serve)
Due to the later start time (because of lack of daylight) the problem is that there are going to be a lot of folks that will seed themselves as the fastest swimmers just to get up front due to fear of missing the 6pm bike cutoff or midnight run cutoff. If everyone seeded themselves honestly it would be a great swim and then the congestion on the bike would be minimized. Unfortunately there is no way to police this.
More info is coming in the next week or so.
Brian Myrick- RD
Thanks, looking forward to more info.
The website says on the FAQ:
Is the swim a mass start?
The swim start is set in a rolling start fashion** (athlete position is first-come, first-served)**
Originally from: http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#ixzz3AChEJBRJ
I read all this stuff and have been thinking about this for over a year. We have not advertised anything about the start! People are guessing at this point.
Due to the later start time (because of lack of daylight) the problem is that there are going to be a lot of folks that will seed themselves as the fastest swimmers just to get up front due to fear of missing the 6pm bike cutoff or midnight run cutoff. If everyone seeded themselves honestly it would be a great swim and then the congestion on the bike would be minimized. Unfortunately there is no way to police this.
More info is coming in the next week or so.
Brian Myrick- RD
I agree that there is no way to police this, HOWEVER the cut off for T2 needs to be relative to when the person’s chip crossed the timing mat before entering the water, not based on when the first person enters the water. This will serve to eliminate this wild panic.
What you need to do to enforce this is set up a timing wire before T2 to give you some forewarning of who will likely miss it. In practice having volunteered for T2 cutoff and midnight cutoff and relaying this info back to “central” generally you can figure out how many folks are at risk.
The rolling start in practice takes around 20-25 minutes to get everyone off. So around 30 minutes before the “last cutoff” you start checking athletes coming in for their actual time to T2. The way to do this is have a timing wire 1 mile before T2. As athletes cross you know if they are about to make their personal cut off or not. Every athlete has a personal cut off that is easily enforceable. Sportstats can take care of this for you. Just talk to Marc Roy…it is dead simple. They have been doing this for wave start swims forever and have it built into their software. I may have not described the mechanics accurately, but it is possible to enforce personal cut offs based on when an athlete entered the water. No need for folks to articially “seed” because they won’t be able to buy themselves time. Everyone gets the same time (as they should).