Ok, so the more they email me, the more I get nervous about the water temp. Last year it was 69 which stung to get in, but it made for a nice swimming temp. By the end, though, my fingers and toes felt a little numb, but that could have been tired (??).
But this year, it could be up to 10 degrees colder?! What to do when the coolest water I can find here in Cincinnati is 80?
Former Member
There are definitely some swimmers who really excel in open water. For example, Alan Bell has beaten me several times at the Fat Salmon swim in Seattle, despite the fact that I'm faster in pool swims. For example in Clovis I went 17:07 in the 1650 and he went 18:28. He didn't swim Fat Salmon this year, however.
Excellent example. Thanks so much Kirk. I knew some people were much better in OW. I did not realize that there was that much of a difference however.
Hold on now. I don't think Chris ever claimed it was done long course.
You know Kirk looking back I do see that was an assumption by me that I made because of my swimming cultural heritage. The sentence said "summer" and therefore I equated it to meaning LCM. So my apologies on that matter. You are 100% correct that Chris did not say that.
Another possible explanation:
Even the race description discusses moving the course further to the East this year so that it was less easy to slingshot down the seawall. Given my really poor navigation for my last two races, I ended up much closer to the seawall than most other swimmers after turn 2 (of course, I was also almost swimming behind the lifeguard boats after turn 1). During that leg, I seemed to be passing a lot of swimmers when I was on the outside, and I'm not that fast. Perhaps a couple of folks used this strategy to their advantage (as opposed to my using it by default).
FTR, my time was 2 minutes faster than last year. I'd like to think it had to do with training, being 10 pounds lighter, and a better swimmer, but who knows. I was also over a minute slower than someone I had bested by a minute in a 2.4 mile swim not 3 weeks before.
Chicago swimmers who train in the play pen know about the current. It can help you or hurt you about 2mins.
There are definitely some swimmers who really excel in open water. For example, Alan Bell has beaten me several times at the Fat Salmon swim in Seattle, despite the fact that I'm faster in pool swims. For example in Clovis I went 17:07 in the 1650 and he went 18:28. He didn't swim Fat Salmon this year, however.
Come on Kirk(!) you know better than that. When Alan Bell beat you last year you averaged 25:35 per mile. This year you averaged 22:57 per mile. You used this years mile times, and last years race results. All things being equal Alan Bell cannot beat you in an open water swim. What can be said is that from time to time one individual may beat another individual because of some unknown variables. But when you are dealing with large numbers it becomes a different matter.
9 of the top 40 swimmes at Big Shoulders also swam a recorded 1650 in 2009 (that I could find):
Name, pace per 100 at Big Shoulders, Pace per 100 for the 1650,
Andy Seibt 67.6 65.8
Alex Tyler 69.5 57.3
Ben Culver 73.5 60.7
Kirk Nelson 73.1 62.3
Will Simmons 72.5 63.0
Eney Jones 74.6 64.9
Larry Wood 75.7 66.0
Dave Pushka 77.3 66.1
Denise Brown 78.3 69.1
This is actually quite remarkable. The order of finish (save one huge exception) in the pool and in the BS was exactly the same.
When common sense and statistical evidence point to one thing and the results point to another I am skeptical. When these atypical results are reinforced by exaggerated claims (in this case 50x100's on 1:10), I become cynical.
Come on Kirk(!) you know better than that. When Alan Bell beat you last year you averaged 25:35 per mile. This year you averaged 22:57 per mile. You used this years mile times, and last years race results. All things being equal Alan Bell cannot beat you in an open water swim. What can be said is that from time to time one individual may beat another individual because of some unknown variables. But when you are dealing with large numbers it becomes a different matter.
9 of the top 40 swimmes at Big Shoulders also swam a recorded 1650 in 2009 (that I could find):
Name, Pace per 100 for the 1650, pace per 100 at Big Shoulders
Andy Seibt 67.6 65.8
Alex Tyler 69.5 57.3
Ben Culver 73.5 60.7
Kirk Nelson 73.1 62.3
Will Simmons 72.5 63.0
Eney Jones 74.6 64.9
Larry Wood 75.7 66.0
Dave Pushka 77.3 66.1
Denise Brown 78.3 69.1
This is actually quite remarkable. The order of finish (save one huge exception) in the pool and in the BS was exactly the same.
When common sense and statistical evidence point to one thing and the results point to another I am skeptical. When these atypical results are reinforced by exaggerated claims (in this case 50x100's on 1:10), I become cynical.
Seibt's data does not fit. Everyone else has a spread of 9 to 12 seconds. A 1.8 spread makes no sense.
I think you've got the second and third columns reversed here. And, of course, one column is pace per 100 yards and the other is pace per 100 meters. On a percentage basis, here's how much slower each of these swimmers' pace was at Big Shoulders than in their best 2009 1650: 3, 21, 21, 17, 15, 15, 15, 17, 13. Purely based on the difference in length between yards and meters the expected difference would be 9%.
Last year's event was against a headwind, though, so everyone was slower. Yeah, it's too bad he didn't swim this year for a better comparison. Anyway, I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. Alan has beaten me enough in open water that it can't just be a fluke!
Yeah I swapped the collumn headers. Fixed that. I didn't convert the yards to meters because the real valuable statistics (Correlation and Variance) do not require convesion to be accurate. But it is interesting to point out that 8 out of the 9 were considerably slower yards to yards (of course the were!).
I've known Andy for some years now, and practice with him in the fall (between my regular team's seasons). For the last few years, he has had a number of injuries (not all swimming related). To the best of my knowledge, this summer is the first time in a long while that he has been healthy for a several month period. That allows him to practice harder than he has in the past. His co-practicers (Tom, Kevin, Anwar, etc.) have been complaining (in a good way) about how Andy has been hammering them this past year. My first practice with the CoD group this week, he was definitely faster than 1:10/100 pace (25 yd pool), during warm-up. (I can't tell you what he did during the main set, because I was too far behind to know when he touched.) He is definitely in better shape/strength/health now, compared to any other time that I can think of.
I don't blame other posters for asking if everything check-out during the race, because it is a pretty amazing result. But between the hard work he has put in the last few months, and the BlueSeventy :D , I can definitely believe it.
Were Andy's previous times also swum wearing a Blue Seventy? One of my teammates, Richard Hahn (age 67), achieved some incredible time drops in LCM this summer wearing a Rocket: 1500 25:03.80 compared to 28:11.46 in 2008 (12 seconds faster/100); 800 13:22.63 compared to 15:05.95 in 2008.
