Galveston 5150 (5i50) - Sept 23 2012 (Page 2)

North Jetty bouy at 82 degrees as of 4am.

I'm gonna see what kind of time I can get without a WS.

Good luck everyone!

Does anyone have the actual distances from the Sprint?  Anyone get with their Garmin?

I was doing my post-race report and whining about the heat.  LOL   I thought I'd see if I could get the actual distances.

I was telling my wife that as miserable as I was today with the heat, I felt pretty good that I got 3rd place in the 40+ Clydes. 

This is basically a cut/paste from my race report, but if anyone is interested in commenting I would love to hear what you have to say. Again - overall a great race and a personal victory. I'm hooked and now I know what I need to do.

At packet pickup I was given a black swim cap. I didn't question this. This guy had one job to do - I figured he knew how to do it. So after the olympic distance starts were over, I start heading down to the dock for the sprint starts. No hurry. I hear the announcer call the first wave saying the group should have navy swim caps - but I thought I heard "Men 39 and under" in the same sentence. That's odd. That's my wave, but I have a black swim cap and all the other guys with black caps are just lounging around. They must have said "29 and under". But then I hear it again... "Men 39 and under - navy swim caps : 5 minutes". Hmmmmm... I better ask. So I push my way through the crowd - ask the nice lady working the timing chip checkpoint "did they say 29, or 39? I'm 39 - but I was given this nice black cap". She replies " oh - no problem - here's a blue one, but you better hurry!" Great! two minutes to start and I haven't even warmed up. So I slap the cap on and run down the dock... well this is nice. I'm dead last in line - the announcer just called "one minute" and there's still 30 people standing on the dock!!! Seriously??? "30 seconds - get in the water guys!" Nobody seems interested in getting in the water. "15 seconds" - I'm still 10 people from the edge of the dock. The horn sounds as I pull my goggles on and jump off the dock - but I can promise you they held off sounding the horn. Does this happen often? I really want to know how much time was added standing around waiting for people to get in the #%*&%!#ing water!

Seemed like a great race overall, but I have a big problem with the swim start. We were all to walk down a narrow (3 feet wide) wooden dock with boat slips on both sides and everyone was to jump in at the end and swim about 25 feet to the start line. Aside from the snafu on my part of not double checking my wave and cap color - there were still dozens of people standing on the dock blocking my way to the water. Why did they blow the horn? It's not the fault of the people in the back that the people in front won't get their @sses in the water. Why wasn't there someone in charge at the end of the dock pushing the slow pokes into the drink? I will take some of the responsibility because I know it is up to me to control the outcome of my race, but this was also my very first race and I was already a little confused about how it was all going to go. I'm pretty sure the timer started as scheduled but they held off on the start horn just to make it seem less screwed up - Based on the "countdown" he was giving us (1 min / 30 sec / 15 sec etc.) I know that was the longest "minute" in history. The start probably cost me 45 seconds to a minute on the front end. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. Not that I'm fast enough to worry about the extra minute, but more than anything it got me really frustrated and in a very bad mindset to begin the race. By the time I was out of the water, I was over it and focused on the rest of my tasks, but the swim was a wreck.

Ok... Flame away on the new guy - I'm ready for it.

It happens to everyone eventually - You obviously have identified the swim cap issue. Always best to triple check prior to leaving packet pick-up to ensure you have the right color cap. Check the documentation, forget asking a volunteer as they usually are just there to hand out items you'd really need to find a race director, and verify you have the right swim cap for your wave.

I was in men's 30-34 AG and was treading water for a couple minutes prior to the gun. Having a bad start is difficult to overcome, especially without much sport experience. Things like scouting the start, looking for potential confusion points prior to the race start if possible always helps. I walked the dock the day prior so I knew to not be in the middle of the pack walking down the pier to the start because i figured there would be some "scaredy-cats" who would rather mill about dry until they HAVE to get in.

Sounds like you enjoyed the race though. The run was terribly hot.