Fat Kid’s Ironman Fitness Blog

Silver Man Triathlon - Swim

I will give a full race report in another post. Here are the highlights and technical details of the swim.

The swim course was a triangle, with an out-and back from the far corner. So imagine something like the shape of a spoon. Lake Mead, the location of the swim, is beautiful, very clear, and very clean (its the drinking water source for Las Vegas and the surrounding cities). They do allow power boats in the lake, however, and since we started the race at the marina, there was a little bit of a “fuel” smell in the water in a few spots… but nothing like Lake Washington.

The weather forecast for the day was 20mph winds with gusts to 35mph. I took this photo of the American flag at T1. This was before the wind really started getting strong. After we were in the water, the wind actually kicked up, and it created some seriously gnarly waves.

My swim started great. I kept an easy pace, and fell into a pack of swimmers who kept me swimming straight, and in a good rhythm. I was able to sight off of a couple of swimmers to my left or right. By the time we got to the half way point, I was really excited to see that I was on pace to set a personal record for the swim.

But then we made the turn… and that’s when things got a little crazy. From my perspective, the wind seemed to kick up and get really bad exactly as we made the turn. Dave seems to think the wind was always bad, but I didn’t noticed it because it was to my back on the way out and therefore was given me a boost. Although that may have been a little bit of the case, it seems to me that the wind was hitting us on the side as we swam the return length of the out and back, and so if the wind had been blowing that same direction and speed we would have noticed it on the way out of that same stretch.

Whatever the cause, the result was that my group of swimmers broke up as we made the turn, and for a short period I was swimming alone and having a hard time getting my bearings. I realized I wasn’t alone, as I saw several swimmers trying to sight the next buoy. I finally found a yellow buoy to swim toward, and eventually caught some other swimmers to swim with as we all made our way to the (hopefully) last turn buoy. The winds got harder and harder, and I was glad that I was comfortable with bilateral breathing as I could only breath on my left side, or else I’d risk getting a wave in my mouth.

I kept wondering if we were really swimming in the right direction. This concern was exacerbated by the fact that the last turn was a concave turn. In general I think it’s better if race directors can avoid concave turns. I think the introduce too great of a risk of confusion.

Finally it seemed as if the swimmers I was with all decided it was time to swim toward shore. I’m not really sure if we’d made it to the turn buoy or not, but we’d certainly swam far enough… time for shore. So, at this point we should have 800 yards to swim… but now we’re swimming directly into these 35mph winds. And so we’re basically swimming into 4ft+ breaking waves. I could only see the shore if I sight from the top of a wave… which was only every 2nd or 3rd breath. It also seemed like none of the swimmers could agree on which direction to swim. As I looked for other swimmers, I could see several, but they were all swimming in different directions.

It was every person for themselves… so I did my best to sight on my own and swim toward shore. A couple of times I found myself swimming in circles. I finally decided that I would swim with other swimmers even if they were swimming in the wrong direction, because I hoped that the kayaks wouldn’t let several of us swim too far off course. It took at least 30 minutes to swim that last 800 yards.

When I finally got to shore, and ran to T1, I was glad that swim was over. My slowest ever IM swim by 15 minutes, but 15 minutes ahead of my “predicted” pace. Wet suit strippers made T1 a little easier, but my T1 was also my slowest ever… although I’ll admit, I wasn’t really trying to have a fast T1.

My biggest mistake with T1 was deciding to mount my shoes on my bike. In retrospect, the uphill start made it impossible to put my shoes on while riding. I didn’t get them on till the top of the hill, and even then I had to stop and take them off my bike and put them on. More on this in my bike report.

(More to come.)

Workout:

• Type: Swim
• Date: 11/09/2008
• Time: 06:30:00
• Total Time: 1:42:07.00
• Average Heart rate: 137
• Max Heart rate: 155
• Distance: 3,862.43 m
• Average Pace: 2:38.65/100m

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