Martha Lake OW Swim Race

That's awesome!  That's my home lake and I had no idea there were going to be races. Thanks for the heads up.

So for those of you that have done a swim only race, what is the start like? I have no idea what the etiquette is. Are people respectful of space or is it a free-for-all?

I swam the Emerald City OW mile a couple weeks ago -- it wasn't much different than the Seafair triathlon start.  Maybe it was a little more hectic, but I didn't really notice a difference.

ooh, I would love to do this race, but I will be out of town. 

The ows races that I have done have had 'friendly' starts...  very little personal space, but everyone that I 'encountered' was courteous. 

We raced this morning - raining, so the water was warmer than the beach.  Spectators were much colder than us swimmers.

Start wasn't difficult - only about 25 of us, so I just waited until the serious folks got into the water & then found a lane & swam by most of them.

Nice lake - temp was at or near 70, almost no wind.

This was a 3 buoy course. 1st & 3rd buoys were large & easy to spot, 2nd buoy wasn't much bigger than a beach ball & was impossible to see until you were almost on top of it.  Come to think of it, 3rd buoy was sooooo far away from buoy #2 that it was difficult to spot, too.  Basically swimming blind for almost 1/2 the race.

Nice event, I hope it's done again in the future, but with more buoys