Swim course marked incorrectly, wrong distance?

Everything I have read and heard suggest this is the norm. Hard to measure accurately I would assume, even with GPS.

30:41 might win some age groups-congratulations

More common to be off than to be on, in my experience.

In my limited first year experience with triathlons, it seems all of the event distances can be off.  In my first triathlon, a sprint, it was advertised as 800m, but my partner's Garmin measured 930m-ish.  Meanwhile, last month's sprint was also advertised at 800m, but someone finished the swim in 7 minutes flat. 7 minutes, really?   In looking over the course before the race, I could see it was short because there is a 150m swim lane set-up for daily lap swim out at this lake.  Using that 150m lane as my guide, it appeared the triathlon course was 150-200m (or more) short.  In the same race, the bike course ended up 1.25 miles short, and due to non-existant course markings for the sprint race, all sprinters ran the 10k route with the Oly distance triathletes.  So, yeah, I'd say the triathlon courses are not always as advertised. 

glf33 - 2011-08-20 5:51 PM I would agree that marking a swim course is difficult, and weather conditions can screw up the best laid out course.

For those of you old school enough to remember the United States Triathlon Series back in the '80s, the Houston races in 1985 and 1986 had the same 1,500 meter swim.  But a big storm blew through the night before the 1986 race. 

We were standing on the shore, looking at the turn-around fireboat thinking WOW that looks a helluva lot further than it did yesterday.  But nothing was changed and they started the pros, then everyone else 10 to 15 min later (this was the days before wave starts).

It felt like we swam forEVER! turns out we did as far as I was concerned. I'd never swam over 1600 yds at the time I think.  My time for that swim was SLOWER than my IM swims.

Scott Tinley won the race in 1985 with a swim split of 19:47.  Dave Scott won in '86 with a swim split of 38:12.  That's right, 38:12 for a legend to swim 1.5k

Turns out the turn-around boat was blown off its anchors. They had to know, but did nothing about it. But we all swam the same course  

They never did tell us how far we swam. THAT's what I wanted to know!  lol

And no, my memory isnt that great, I still have the results books from the races

I was at that race.  I had heard they used Cinder blocks to anchor the markers.  The silt on the bottom is so dense and slippery, the Cinder blocks were able to be tugged along by the wind and the waves hitting the markers.  The turn around was just chaos and mayhem.   The whole group of swimmers just turned around into each other and a mass of swimmers ran into each other.  By the time my wave went you had to almost completely traverse the lake.

If you have the results I was Neil V in the 25-30 range.  I finished the swim in over an hour.  The bike course on that route was pretty darn windy as well.  The run thankfully went through the neighborhood.

I was at that race as well, in the sprint.  I think the sprint swim was long as well - the times for this year's finishishers are significantly longer than the last two years.

It was my first triathlon, and while I loved the sport, I thought the event was okay.  The reeds were terrible in the lake.  I also wished there was some food available right at the end, with the water.  Bananas, a bag of pretzels, something.. 

Overall I had fun and am anxious to do another tri.  My run sucked due to IT band issues, so if I can resolve that I will be thrilled!

Congrats on your great swim!

We were in the same age-group.  But you finished 14 out of 157 in our age group. And I was, ummmm wayyyyyy down the list.

And FYI, you were UNDER 1 hour for the swim - 59:45. Nice job ... way back when  lol

Thanks for looking it up.

Back to the original poster:  Yes they are sometimes incorrectly marked. 

From my experience it's pretty common. I've had Oly's take me anywhere from 22 minutes to 29 minutes (much more like it) . Also, one half I did, there was such bad fog during the swim that first of all I'm surprised they let us out there, but one of the buoys drifted off without anyone on the race staff noticing until way too late - that added 800 meters to the course, quite a PR killer. 

The good news is that everyone's swimming the same incorrectly-marked course, so it all evens out in the end. I'll take a short or long OW course over a pool any day