General Discussion Triathlon Talk » Escape From Alcatraz Swim Times Rss Feed  
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2018-06-05 8:04 PM


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Subject: Escape From Alcatraz Swim Times
I just did the escape from Alcatraz Tri and my Swim time seemed freakishly fast (for me). Is anyone deeply familiar with this race? If so, I was kind of curious if they matched the start time to the tide. Because I was doing much slower times in open, but I think relatively still, water only a few days before. Also comparing the front running Escape times to the top Ironman times the escape times seem to have an edge (21 min for the 1.5 mile Escape vs 45-50 min minutes for a top 2.4 Ironman-er)

And speaking as a non-ocean expert, just as a guy who watched the harbors for a few days before, I think it would have matched about the halfway point of the tide going out (start time 7:30 AM San Francisco time). Anyway, just curious if anyone knew anything about this.


2018-06-06 9:40 PM
in reply to: d.rock90

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Subject: RE: Escape From Alcatraz Swim Times
I did this 2 years ago. I got the impression that the current is always strong there, whether tide or not. They also told us on the race briefing that the distance you cover is actually longer than what they had officially put in the program, but they estimated that with the help of the current the effort is similar to the 1.5 miles that was in the program.

Not surprised if they time it to the tide, but I think the main factors for the race start is that it has to be as early as possible to cause as little disturbance to the bay traffic as possible, while still bright enough to be safe.
2018-06-07 3:45 PM
in reply to: d.rock90

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Subject: RE: Escape From Alcatraz Swim Times
The bay has a tidal current, so twice a day the Bay floods with the high tide and twice it drains with low tide. They generally time the race (and other swims) to start during the slack - the pause between flood and ebb - and heading into ebb. If they held it during a flood you’d never finish. My fastest mile ever was at Alcatraz, 11 minutes swimming sideways
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