Turtle Sprint Triathlon : Official Thread (Page 4)

My understanding as well was that you had to keep EVERY bouy to your left. That's what the RD said at the start. The second bouy (first orange one) was way further out than the first yellow cone. I had to swim out alot farther and took alot of time to keep that bouy to my left. If not everybody did, then they had a significant advantage over those of us that took the instructions at face value.

Edited by cindi 2010-05-18 10:09 AM

I was in the water warming up during the RD instructions (my bad I know).  So he did indeed say keep the orange bouys to your left.... or did he say keep yellow bouys to your left? Because if we did not have to keep them all on the left we could just go to 3 inches of water and run... then swim to last yellow bouy and round it to the finish.

Edited by jshortman 2010-05-18 10:16 AM

I do think that was his intention, based on his comments at the awards ceremony, but that is what the different shaped bouys are supposed to represent, "sighting" bouys vs. mandatory bouys.  As for the DQ or penalty thing.  The USAT official does not officiate the swim portion, that duty goes to the RD.  And, for the people wearing sleeved wetsuits, no body markings are visible so I don't even know how they'd hand out violations.  That is one thing that is weird to me.  In Chicago, they would "body mark" the swim caps.  I'm not sure why they don't do that here.

I don't remember his exact words.  I thought he said keep the bouys to your left.  I know on the sprint he said to go straight out through the two green bouys, turn until the yellow one and turn left towards the beach. 

I am glad to read all of your feedback and see that I am not way off in left field to have thought that wasn't right!

I agree: why not put numbers on the swim cap?  That would help.  I didn't realize the swim portion was not refereed. 

I also am interested to learn about the different shape buoys - didn't know that.  He definitely did say, though, to keep buoys on your left and to turn left at the last one, and I am little miss rule follower, so of course I took that literally.  I would not be able to live with myself if I had 'cheated' the swim course.

Before seeing all of your comments, I did send an email to both Jim at Ga Multisports and to USAT to try and figure out what the deal is with that.  If I get a reply from either, I will share it! 

I heard someone ask the USAT official about it after the race, and he said that as long as went around the 2 yellow bouys, you could be inside of the others.

That's not the impression I had from directions given by the RD though. I had to swim back out a little bit to get around the first red bouy (I swear I was going straight for it, but at the last minute it took off 20 yards further out to sea), and then made sure to stay out there for all the others cause I didn't want to go through that again.

Hmm, I will say this:  if that is true, then I could've LEGALLY saved myself a lot of trouble by just going around the first one, then swimming in to shallower water, then swimming back out.  Just not sure how I feel about that for future races...

I know! I thought about that too. The lady next to me in transition ran up during T1 saying something about they took her timing chip, but she was going to do the bike and run anyway. I thought to myself I wonder what she did and how they managed to pick her out of the water amongst the crowd? But I later figured out she voluntarily quit the swim.

I figure I'd rather swim outside all of the bouys (where I'm supposed to be) then go back in. I thought about skipping that first bouy when I realized where I was, but knew I wouldn't be happy with my race if I purposefully missed one when I could have done something about it. I didn't want to violate the spirit of the race just because the rules said it was ok to do, even if I lose a bit of advantage by doing so. The awards are fun to get, but not worth feeling like I didn't really deserve it.

Edited by beckjon 2010-05-18 11:29 AM

Exactly!  I totally agree.  And I'm in no danger of getting an award, anyway! :-)

I know this is just arguing symantics at this point but.....  the shortest "legal" swim was: out to the first bouy, a straight line between the two yellow bouys, and in from the last bouy.  Since you can't possible see that last yellow bouy, the orange bouys are provided so that you can follow them until you can see that last yellow one.  (Although, I will agree that Jim Rainey said something along the lines of keeping "the" bouys to your left which implies all of them). 

And, like Cindi said, one bouy wasn't set in the right position as it didn't line up with the others so you had to swim out a little further to keep that one on your left (and even if you didn't, you'd be swimming out a little further while using it for sighting).

I can't fathom how people who swam inside the orange bouys were faster as you'd have to essentially do two out and backs rather than one......but there would be a difference if you bypassed one of the "mando" bouys.  And, of course, you shouldn't be walking in a tri swim.  I think it posed a logistics problem because the guards were lined up just outside of the orange bouys and wouldn't be able to easily get to someone significantly closer to the shore without crossing the line of swimmers and, of course, the whole walking thing definitely isn't in keeping with the spirit of triathlons.  It'll be interesting to hear Jim's response.

It is possible that he only owns two of the triangle bouys (of each color) and was using the orange ones as substitutes for triangle ones. 

Actually, from standing out there the night before and looking at them, I don't think any of the bouys were lined up! I'm pretty sure I had drifted pretty far towards the shore though when I turned to go around the bouy. I was swimming straight for it, then next thing I knew I was way to the right of it so I figured I had drifted off course.

And I think we're in agreement. My post was more me thinking I wouldn't feel right going closer to shore to make the swim easier (or walk). At the time I wasn't even thinking about the bouys being crooked...I was just just trying to make it through the swim!

Well, I just can't see how that can be correct. Using that logic, you could swim out to the first buoy, turn around and come back to the shore, run down the beach, swim out to the last buoy, around and back in. This would be a MASSIVE advantage.

Sounds like this rule needs to be tightened up.
 

Edited by The Cube 2010-05-18 2:24 PM

True.  I was thinking that same thing.  Why not just run along the shore if you are going to walk along the bottom anyways? I think the intent is that you are actually swimming the swim course other than the points where it is physically impossible to swim, such as the start and finish (or at that one race last where the course passed over a sandbar).  I completely agree that swimming into shore and making forward progress by walking along the bottom is not appropriate for a triathlon.  You could certainly rest that way but that is it.  I just cannot grasp how that could be "faster"....well, I guess I could see it being faster based on comparing our swim Sat to swimming upstream in a river.