Current Ohio river temps

• On race morning, athletes will walk 3/4 mile from Waterfront Park to the swim start, located at the Brown Forman Amphitheater, just east of Tumbleweed Southwest Grill.
  
• Athletes will self-seed themselves at the start based on their projected swim time.
  
• A mass swim start will begin at 6:50 a.m. for nearly 40 professional athletes, and a time trial start will follow at 7 a.m. for age group athletes.
  
• To reduce athlete congestion during the swim, the time trial start will consist of athletes entering the water every few seconds.  Athletes will be required to cross a timing mat before entering the water, to record their official start time.  Overall finish times will reflect the time at which each athlete enters the water, vs. the 7 a.m. start time.
  
• The new swim course will encompass the traditional 2.4 miles.  As a result of the increased river flow downstream, slightly faster swim times can be expected.

You've got to be kidding me ........ a TT start to an Ironman????  Even starting on 3 second intervals by the time the 2100th person goes off it will be at least an hour and a half later ......... and they are going to make people swim with the current and not against it?  Jeez ....... the pros are going to be out of the water in the low 40's probably.

Sucks not to be able to use a wetsuit.  That is going to force a lot of mediocre and weak swimmers to freak out ......

(And to reiterate previous threads on the topic, if it is allowed, you are a fool not to use one, even at the elite level unless you are a sub 1:00/100 m or so swimmer).

Same thing I was saying ........

WOW!  WTF is right!   In my opinion (as a qualified weak swimmer), part of the true IM experience is surviving the mass swim start.  And this doesn't even consider what this does to the field for the rest of the day.   As stated above, calculators will be required to determine if someone makes the cut-off times.

Oh well, good luck to all of our BT athletes.  Enjoy the experience!

This just blows me away! The current must be really fast. I'm curious though, if you swam for 30 minutes and swam out for 15 and back in 4...where did the other 11 minutes go?

~Mike

Do you think the current is fast enough that slow swimmers (those who already expecting to be pushing the swim cutoff) might truly not be able to make forward progress against it?

Take a "2 hour IM swimmer" for example.  They're swimming 1.2 mph with no current.  If the current is faster than that, these people are going backwards in the upstream section.

I suppose that's precisely why they moved the swim start to a spot where the currents are a little weaker, as you said. 

-Steve