Distance Accuracy in Races (Page 2)

With all due respect, you'll just drive yourself crazy if you obsess about the accuracy of triathlon courses.

As far as your race strategy, if you think you're going to be in the top 20-30 in a 1500M swim, then you still should be whether the measureed distance is +/- 10%.  It's going to be the same for everyone.

In a large race there will likely always be slower swimmners in front of you and faster ones behind at the start.  You have no idea who's going to show up.  Make a reasonable guess about where to start and then adapt your strategy once you get going. 

Mark

How do you do that?  Do you know everyone in the race?  There is no way in hell you could do that here.....I've seen first place in a local 5K be 14:20 and I've seen it be 16:50,  and everything in between.....how do you figure you are going to know who to pace off of or who you should pass or not  pass?

It's triathlon......about 1% of the people who do it are really fast, and who those people are changes by race length.  What you need to concentrate on is having the best race you can have.....and forget who else is there or if the distance is off, or whatever.

What is the distance of the race and what are your bike and run times....how many people? Local or regional race?

That happened in one of my races as well, but the bouey didn't come un-anchored until half way through the wave starts. So the earlier waves swam a much shorter distance than the later waves. For people who preach "we all do the same distance on race day, who cares" - that line doesn't always apply.

HAHAHA!!  Kansas City I bet.....I was there.

It was one of the Kansas 70.3s in Lawrence - in the triangle swim the two far/turn boueys started off parallel to each other. But when I got there it was obvious that the first turn bouey was floating away, and even the lifeguard was trying to wrangle it. 30mph winds at 7 a.m. will do that!

I kind of expect most to be off by some degree, but one that frustrated me quite a lot was a trail run (also in Lawrence!) advertised as a half marathon. It was almost 14.5 miles and the race organizers knew it (I confirmed this afterwards) - but they continued to say it was a half marathon distance. It was my first trail run, and with other LONG distances going on at the same time (50K, 100K, full marathon, etc.) I actually thought I had taken a wrong turn and was going to end up doing my first 50 miler or something until I popped out of the woods to see the finish line. One of those races where you don't see anyone for long periods of time and lots of opportunities to hop on the wrong trail, so it was a bit unnerving. 

You won't see many swims faster than 18-19 minutes....but you'll probably have a couple hundred in that 20-25 minute zone....no more than that.  Triathletes can't swim worth a crap.  If you want to stay out of everyone's way then your best bet is to keep to the right on the bike......quite a few folks will likely pass you there.  The run is just a run.....15-20% will be walking at any given time, even in an Oly race.

Must be the Ks. wind.....it was a 5150 that I was talking about.....maybe 3 years ago.  Same deal, right bouy of a triangle went rogue.   I saw it happen at a women's Jr. Elite race this year as well......the boneheads setting the bouys didn't bother to attach the anchors......it looked fine until the breeze started to blow just after the race started....then it looked like a three stooges movie.  

I work a certified "race measurer" and he explained how it's done (not going to go into the details unless someone wants to know).

One of the things is they take the absolute shortest possible route on a course.  So I if you cut ever corner exactly right, and run a perfect tangent from curve to curve, you should get the proper distance within a tolerance.  Also, believe it or not, they DON'T use GPS as the official way to measure a course.

So most of the time, you will be long since you can't run the course perfectly with other runners on the course.  If you run it SHORT, then you cheated (knowing or unknowingly)

However, that's if it's a sanctioned race the RD chose to pay to have it measured.  He measures the R&R marathon here, Silverman/70.3 Championships, and other big races.  Some of the local stuff?  They get close and call it good and don't pay for the official measurement.

If you are legit low 20s for an oly swim, you should start just off the front row--not in the middle or back, for sure.  If the swim start is wide enough, even on the front row.  Mostly depends how aggressive a swimmer you are and how much contact does/doesn't bother you.  Go a little wider the more it does.  The more aggressive you are, shade towards the middle/inside/front and try to find some faster feet to latch onto.  No need to worry about how close the distance is to accurate or not.

I've always liked these stickers:

(816B05okdbL._SL1500_.jpg)

Yep, same here. It didn't float away until half way through the swim. It was my first half IM, and my goal was just to finish so I wasn't too too pissed off about whatever the discrepancy in the swim distance was, but if I was more competitive about that race, I'm sure I would have had a different attitude about it.

LOL!