Swim HOT

Brass tacks. That’s what athlete’s see. From their (our!) perspective it starts with the initial impression of the race, advertisements, magazine articles, web sites, blogs, pod casts, newsgroups, or good old word of mouth. Our challenge as a first year event was to let people know the what, where, when and how’s of the race.

It’s pretty easy to describe the basics: swim, bike and run in small circles repeatedly for 24 hours. Those covering the greatest distance win. The reality is less straightforward, and considerably more interesting.

We were restricted to having swimming only between the hours of 6:30 am and 6:30 pm, so we wanted rules that kept the race fair and unbiased. Our original idea was to keep the run-bike-run-bike order and allow swimming at any time to make up for “lost” swims at night. After a lot of to and fro between triathlete clubs and discussion groups, we came up with modified USAT rules to allow swimming in any order at any time during light hours.

Eventually we came up with the a leg rule that required the first three legs in swim-bike-run order, and then legs in any order after that. “Complete” triathlons count towards the total (and no night swimming), with the possibility of an additional swim and bike counting since they are in "triathlon order." This means a competitor could have, for example, ten complete triathlons plus one swim, or plus one swim and one bike.

The leg rule lead to some fascinating strategies, with most people opting to bank swims on the first day to account for the weather, cramping and fatigue, then adjust the next morning. I'm really not sure how it will play out this year, but competitors are already formulating their strategies.