Beach to Battleship

Here is the post from Slowtwitch - Please let me know if i'm wrong


markfw

Nov 4, 08 14:34

Post #38 of 40 (445 views)
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Re: Beach2Battleship: How was it? [psycholist] [In reply to] Can't Post

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I'm glad everyone had a good experience here in Wilmington. I did the full because I was born and live in Wilmington and wanted to try the distance. I had a blast and gained alot of experience in my first IM distance. The current is always an issue when swimming in the ICW here. But for this race it happened to start, 7:10ish, about 2.5 hours after the change in tide which is when it is moving the fastest. Setup has no control over the lunar tides so it was what it was. As most of you probably know, their is a slack time in the tides for about :45~1:00 before and after the tide change. For the sprint this year the first waves, I was in the second, went off during this slack tide, and the waves that went off up to an hour later had the full benefit of the tide. No one complained, again it is what it is. For reference, the tide chart for Nov 7 2009, shows that the race, if started at 7:00, would take off during the tail end of the slack period, so it should be a slightly slower swim. I randomly chose the 7th since the weekend before and after would be swimming on a falling tide (against the current), now that would be a true iron distance swim, 2.4 miles swimming against a 2~3+ knot current. You tread water to get your bearings, you go backwards.

Again, glad everyone had a good time!

Mark