Beach 2 Battleship Iron Distance : Official Thread (Page 11)

DanielG - 2010-08-21 6:20 PM You are within 1/4 mile of the shore on either side of you and there are boats all up and down the channel the whole way. There was a huge white yacht looking thing at the point you have to take a left. Navigation is about the least of your worries on the swim. Actually, if you're comfortable swimming the distance there are no worries on the swim

Thanks! That is great news, I did a race in a river once and I swam into sunken trees and into the oncoming lane so I got a fist in my face by someone who was coming downstream.

Cheers

Arne

Yep, but there is no buildings.  It's at the southern tip where there are buildings and an area to drop a clothing bag, then walk through the sand to the southern most point in view of the ocean.  There's only two things to remember, swim out and keep the first buoy on your right, the next marker that comes into play is at the turn which will be there for both the half and full is a boat with a "Squiqqly Man" like you'd see in front of a used car lot or store to draw attention, keep that on your left, then head for the marina.  Just remember no other buoys come into play and are simply course markers as I witnessed several people swimming to one out of the way thinking they had to go around it and it had to add quite a bit of time and distance to there race.  This was covered real well in the pre race meeting.

Makes it nice since there's plenty of elbow room in the channel.

You can stay anywhere and not really worry about getting to the start on race morning.  Traveling around the Wilmington Wrightsville area is pretty easy at that time of the morning.  Otherwise it was a busy area during daylight hours.

The choice you have to make depending on if you have a sherpa with you is if whether you want to drive to T1 or downtown.  If you have a sherpa it's just as easy to go to T1 and let them drive downtown after you head out on the bike.  If your flying solo or with another racer and only have one ride.  Reserve a spot on the shuttle as early as possilbe (yeah it fills up well before race week so do it as soon as allowed) and take that from near the Hilton on race morning, that way when you finish you can take the ferry or trolley back to the Hilton and get to your car.  There is no shuttle service back to T1 after the race.

I noticed last year that some folks had taxi's picking them up at the finish, so that's always an option if you want to park at T1 and not deal with the shuttles, which weren't bad for me after finishing just over 12 hours, but had some long waits for half athletes.

I didn't use the Heed but know the water was in a sport type bottle as I'd grab one spray it into the Aerodrink and toss it.