Today is a rest day. It isn't supposed to be a rest day, but I'm out tonight, straight from work, for my netball team end of season dinner, so kit management was going to be too difficult for me to train as well. I'll do something tomorrow - I'm not sure what, but something.
However, in the last couple of days, there has still been stuff going on. The main thing has been the publication of the start times and race numbers for all the competitors in the WorldTri London triathlon, along with the Competitor Guide (which has in it all of the info about where to be and when). So, at 17:00 on Sunday, 1 June, I shall be starting my first triathlon in Wave 61, wearing a blue swimming hat and sporting number 5395. James will be starting at the same time, with similar headgear, and number 5394. Needless to say, if you're around in London that day and would like to cheer us on, make your way to Hyde Park as it would be great to see a few friendly faces!!
Some of the things that the Competitor Guide does are to set out exactly how many laps you have to do in each discipline and, crucially, how far each of the three triathlon distances is and what the cut-off times are (i.e. the time you have to complete the triathlon within, else they might pull you off the course and not let you finish). When we signed up for the super sprint distance, the website said (and still does say), quite clearly, that the swim distance is 400m. This is what we've been training for and, as I've found out in the last couple of days, what all the other super sprinters have been training for, too. However, in the Competitor Guide, consistently throughout, the swim is referred to as being one lap of 500m. That would represent an increase in the swim distance of 25%. That's a lot further.
In addition, we had been told at sign-up that the cut-off time for the super sprint distance would be 1.5 hours. While this is certainly achievable for me, it could have got a little on the tight side in the event that I got my leg stuck in my wetsuit or, for example, had to swim 500m instead of 400m. In the Competitor Guide, however, the cut-off is set at an absolute time of 7 p.m., regardless of what your start time is - for me, with a 5 p.m. start time, this means that I would have an extra half an hour to complete the race, which would take off a huge amount of pressure (during my marathon training I learned to live in abject terror of the sweeper bus); for those with a later start, though, this would mean they might have five or ten minutes less time to finish.
There were a number of other errors in the Guide as well (such as a reference to the event being on 1 May and the number of laps for the sprint distance being put in for the super sprint), but the swim distance and cut-off times seemed to be the main issue.
The super sprinters, including me, very quickly took to social media - first of all to verify among ourselves that our understanding of 400m swim and 1.5 hour cut-off was consistent (which it was), and then to try to get some answers on how far we needed to be swimming and, effectively, how fast. There were many, many tweets and facebook messages to the organisers asking for clarification and several people said they had e-mailed as well (which I also did). Eventually, last night, someone got a response to an e-mail and posted it on facebook - the swim is 400m and the cut-off is about 7 p.m. but they aren't going to enforce it too rigidly. Result. The cut-off time saga is over. Swim-distancegate is resolved. As you were.
No comments:
Post a Comment