Anyone swam in a Red Tide??

When you approach the water, you will start coughing. If the air makes you cough, what effect will immersing yourself in the water have?

No way you'd get my butt in water with red tide outbreak. Stay away.

I don't know a thing about red tide but can it be much worse than that sewer we swam in last weekend??  I'm willing to bet if they had stocked that lake pond with fish they would have died too.  Good luck!

Southern Cal has had a red tide almost all summer.  Usually it is just a few weeks but this year it didn't go away.  Swam in it probably a dozen times and it isn't too bad.  I did have a little issue with some, lets just say, loose bowel movements. 

There were races held where you swam right through the red tide so I don't know if they would cancel your race.

I forgot, some dude got bit by a sea lion and people were saying the animals were more aggressive due to the red tide.

I'm sure you wanted to hear that!

The red tide in So Cal may be different than the TX red tide.  "They say" our red tide (at least the stuff close in) doesn't affect us adversely.   The sea lions are affected because they eat the fish that eat the crustaceans that.......

I sWaM in IT all SUmmEr AnD I Am fIne.....

I did the Coca-Cola/Publix sprint race on Lido Key here in Sarasota in June just after the height of the red tide.  Fortunately, there was a pretty strong breeze blowing the fumes north towards Renee up in Tampa, so that cut down a lot on the coughing and eye irritation.

Lots of dead fish in the water.  In fact, the county had a maintenance crew there to scrape/plow the dead fish off the beach that would wash up between each of the starting waves. We were cautioned by the race officials to avoid stepping on any fish so as not to impale the bottom of our feet with dead fish bones.

We joked that the person who brought the biggest dead fish back to T1 would get a prize (like maybe a two minute time bonus!)  It was kind of weird swimming along and having to frequently dodge 2'-3' long dead fish floating in the water.  This was also just after the bull shark attacks up on the FL panhandle. I did ponder for a moment or two whether swimming like a wounded seal in the middle of a natural chum line was really an advisable (or intelligent) thing to do. I also found out later that yellow is the bull shark's favorite color - just like the tri top I was wearing!

Depending on the wind direction & strength, I would occasionally cough during the bike and run legs, but it really wasn't incapacitating or anything.  I'd like to blame my poor run time on the red tide, but we all know better..

We still had some lingering effects of the red tide this past Sunday during the race on Siesta Key, with some minor coughing and eye irritation whenever the wind was blowing straight off the water.

Mark <cough>

Now that is a tri challenge that I can honestly say never even occurred to me....

Jeez.... I thought a "red tide" had something to do with "that time of the month"... I've never heard of a red tide... although I'm from Illinois, and tides don't affect us here very much.... red or otherwise.

That being said.... it sounds creepy, dangerous and ecologically imbalanced. I think I'd stay away. (!!!)

Whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

UPDATE

Due to red tide conditions, the tri has been changed to a duathlon.... 2 mile run, 14 mile bike, 2 mile run.  Not too excited about this one now, but I'll probably still go out and do it for the training.