swim seeding thoughts
Hi all, just wanted to get peoples thoughts on where to appropriately seed oneself for a rolling swim start. I'll be doing Boulder and lets just say swimming is a supreme weakness. Literally was last in the water during my attempt (failed 2/2 slow swim) at Ironman 70.3 Placid. on the one hand thought to once again seed in the very back (while better, still thinking i'm looking at best at a 2hr swim) alternately, thought to seed 1 group higher kinda as a pacer to not let me drift to much on pace and as a way to maybe use "group energy" to keep me going hopefully at a rate that gets me out of the water in a time that allows me to continue the quest!
???
any thoughts appreciated.
NP
???
any thoughts appreciated.
NP
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Seeding in the next to last group is okay because those will be swimmers who are a bit faster than you but not the super aggressive types. Draft as much as you can and use them to motivate you to keep pushing and obviously stay on toes whenever you can. But also swim your own swim, try to relax and if you're in clean water, just keep swimming. Sight often (even if you are following others) because swimming off course will cost you a ton of extra time and wasted energy.
There is a limit to the above however... Do NOT seed yourself in the front groups with the really fast swimmers. If you do this, you will get mauled as the super fast type-A people continually swim right over top of you. And you will be just catching your breath as the medium fast swimmers also swim right over top of you.
For me, it's more important to avoid most contact, so regardless of how I seed myself, I always swim slightly wider than the main pack. It's free and clear typically. I'll also swim wide around the buoys.
I've found the seeding times to be pretty good at the last few races, so if you are a 1:20 swimmer, pick a spot right around that time. Poor swimmers should never get aggressive on assessing swim times in my opinion. It only adds unnecessary stress.
As pointed out you don't want people swimming over you and honestly as a 1:30 IM swimmer I don't want to be holding faster swimmers up. Having said that if you are on the edge of a DNF moving to the front of the last or second last group could get you a few extra minutes to finish the swim. You have 2:20 after the last swimmer enters the water. So if you can handle some possible contact or just start a little wider on the first leg I'd say move up a little to get yourself 5-10 extra minutes.
Not having done boulder I've never found the swim too bad in the 1:30 finish time at Lake Placid or Canada.
Note Tom Glynn's warning about being aggressive and adding in stress. It won't help if you get out of rhythm and have to grab a kayak.