THE SWIM - IRONMAN SOUTH AFRICA 29 MARCH 2015

I always equate the feeling one has the couple of minutes before the start whistle goes off to the same nervous feeling one has before writing an important theoretical exam during High School or University.

When the start cannon was fired at 6:45am a number of guys did a full on sprint to the first wave and soon I found myself with about 50 swimmers ahead of me. It was approximately 300m out to the first buoy and the swim was as per usual a tumultuous one. Some of the top age groupers were being rather aggressive defending their line to the buoy and would not hesitate dunking someone had swimmers get in their way.

En route to the first buoy. The craziness of a swim start unfolds.

I could feel that the first half of my swim did not go as planned. I got blocked by swimmers who had outsprinted me to the first buoy. I also made one or two navigation errors trusting the guys ahead of me to swim straight (rookie error) as I know the landmarks pretty well in PE. I was also struggling to find rhythm as the sea was choppy on race morning. During the first half of the swim course I found myself swimming alone during various sections whilst every now and then finding a pair of feet to draft on the homeward bound section.

Going round the first buoy 300m out. This is where I lost some time.

I managed to recover from my less than perfect swim start. I could see that I was overtaking a number of swimmers on the way back to the pier. I made another navigation mistake when I got closer to the pier at Hobie Beach. With the Ocean racing series (local open water swimming series held in PE over the summer) the red buoy is usually placed closer to the pier. With the Ironman swim the final red buoy was more left of the pier than I was used to and had to swim skew to navigate around it keeping the buoy the right of me as I passed it.

The home stretch of the swim was in sight and it was encouraging to see hundreds of spectators on the pier cheering everyone on. I finally planted my feet on the sand and could feel my left calf muscle cramping up for a moment.

Exiting the swim (Jana capturing the photo from the pier)

Dazed and confused (as is usual after a swim of such distance and intensity) I worked my way up to T1 into the transition tent. I was relieved to check my Suunto Ambit 3 and saw that I managed to slip in just under an hour.

Heading into T1 after the swim

Before analysing my age group results below, I determined from checking www.ironman.com I noticed that 237 individuals in the M35-39 finished within the cut-off of 17hours. Interesting to note that the newspaper issued at race registration listed approx. 300 individuals entered in the M35-39 age group. Looking at the results on Ironman.com I can conclude that there were 296 individuals registerd for the M35-39 age group of which 39 did not start (DNS) and 20 individuals did not finish (DNF).

What I also need to mention here is that I attended the Kona slot allocation function on the Monday. There were 10 slots available for the Ironman World Champs in my age group M35-39. From what I recall a maximum of two guys declined their slots to Kona meaning that the 10 slots rolled down two positions. 

The 12^th finisher in my age group was thus the last individual to qualify for Kona. As part of my results analysis I included the average split for each discipline that was attained by the Kona Qualifiers. Being an accountant I love analysing race results in Microsoft Excel making use of pivot tables and the works.

Herewith my swim stats:

My swim split time – 58:23

Average pace – 1:32 per 100m (My gps indicated 1:26 per 100m which is more of my usual pace. Clearly I swam skew during the swim leg which is rather frustrating).

Men 35-39 age group placing: 6^th / 237

Average swim split for the M35-39 age group: 1:16:31

Average swim split of M35 – 29 Kona qualifiers – 1:00:22

Onto T1 next to put my bike kit on and 4min later I was out of there setting off for the strenuous bike course.