Why you need to give an accurate swim time.
Often, when entering a triathlon, a regular question on the registration form asks you what your estimated swim time is. It’s important to get that as accurate as you can and here’s why.
I hadn’t done a pool based swim before. All my events were some form of open water, so timing didn’t matter, generally speaking, as you could pick an open line and just go for it. In the pool it was different…
We were swimming a snaked set of 8 laps twice. So you zig zag up and down for 8 lengths, hop out, run around, hop in and do another 8.
The night before the triathlon, I was trying to find my time I entered, to see how it compared with what I was doing in training. Talking to the people in the line around me, I had a feeling it may have been wrong. I moved a couple of places back, but was aware I didn’t want to hold up the really fast people.
It came my turn to start. I hopped in the pool and allowing the chap in front a 30 second head start, they started the timer for me. Off I went. By the end of my first lap, I’d already caught up to the guy in front.
The race director made it quite clear that if you tap the person in front of you on the leg, they need to let you pass at the turn.
The first guy did. The second guy on length three didn’t. I had to overtake him and try and do it before the person coming the other way collided with me. On the fourth length the guy had no Idea… I ended up having to breastroke as I couldn’t overtake (land traffic) and he was that much slower than me. At the turn, he looked me clearly in the face…and carried on!
This carried on for my entire swim and ended up costing me a about 1.5 minutes when you compare it to my average swim time in training! That’s a big difference and one, when you compare entire times of our TriPals at the end of the event, would have had us even closer together!
So yea, it was frustrating as hell for me, the swim is my strongest event, but I imagine it was also pretty annoying for those I was overtaking.
So my advice? When registering for the event, be as accurate as you can with your times. If you have months between entering and race day and you realise your average time is quicker, let the organiser know. If it comes down to it, on the day, speaks to this around you in the line and move up or down depending on what they are all saying. You (and they) will thank you for it! You 