Did anyone hear the RD annonce that the swim course was long. I thought I heard something along those lines in the pre-race announcements but it was hard to hear the speaker from my transition spot. Any details appreciated. If it wasn’t long, then hopefully I can use the current as an excuse for my slow swim.
I didn’t hear him say it was long, but I think it was a bit long. Comparing various people’s ave. swim times, seems it was about 3 minutes longer than most races. I swam about 3 min. slower. However, part of that is because of the choppy waves, and current too. It was fairly wavy out there today. I tried to do a warmup swim, kept getting knocked off my feet just trying to get out there. Decided wrestling in waves before the race may not be that fun. It was crazy how far out there we swam though, in true shark territory. Those buoys were far out! The bike course was short to make up for the long swim.
Thanks for the feedback. My time was closer to what I’d expect for a half IM swim. I did a pretty bad job sighting in the swells so a lot of that may have been because I added a lot of distance swimming in the wrong directions. The bike was definitely a bit short. My bike computer clocked it at 22.25 miles and other people I spoke to had about the same distance. As a poor swimmer, I would have much preferred a shorter swim and longer bike. But with a well run race and nice weather, you won’t find me complaining.
I did not hear them say it was long. It may have been, but there was a very good current. As I watched the first wave go off, I saw they were all heading away from the buoy. I tried to compensate, but was still 30yards north of the buoy. My time was more like 8-10 minutes slower on the Oly course.
Then I ended up swimming through the sprint tri course because of the way they had it set up. We were told to come straight in from the last yellow buoy which with the current went into the sprint course.
No problems though. I enjoyed the race and thought it was well run.
I didn’t hear them announce anything about the swim being long, but they did say that the bike was short at about 11.1 miles for the sprint. The only complaint I had about the event was the starting order for the sprint, as my heat (All male ages, including Pro) started about 3 minutes after the Womens group (also all ages and pros)…meaning I caught up with that group at the first buoy.
Other than that, it was my first triathlon ever and I definitely learned a lot of lessons…I was able to be second out of the water from my heat, was decent on the bike, but lost a lot of ground on the run and finished about 40th overall. I definitely need to work on that run.
All-in-all, I thought it was a very well coordinated event with a lot of volunteers, great job…are the transition racks usually that tight?
Nice job. You must have finished just ahead of me. I was 42 overall. I think 37th men’s Sprint. I think the sprint swim was a little long compared to 2007, the last time I did S.F. I had a good entry, good sighting, no drift and was slower than '07. Of course, maybe I was just slower. But everyone was slower when I pulled the times from '07.
I think I was just slower on the run though I finished higher than '07. Maybe Men’s 35-39 were slow this year but it’s usually a very competitive age group.
It looked to me like the majority of the pack on the swim drifted to the right after entering the water. If you recall it was a bit of a left angle from where we started on the beach to the first buoy, and I took a B-line straight at that buoy. When I looked around between swells about half way out, I got worried because it was just me and this other guy, and a big pack off to my right. I think the front of that pack when straight out from the beach instead of taking the angle…I dunno, but I saw the girls heat before us did the same thing. Maybe that was why it seemed slower?
Now that the complete results are posted, I thought the run killed me but actually it was the bike that killed me. I was really worried about the run, so I was pretty relaxed on the bike and didn’t go too hard, and looking back I could have pushed it a lot more. Anyways, lesson learned…first tri so I’m happy.