Convinced that the Calgary 70.3 swim course was longer than the advertised 1900m I figured I should compare to the results from the Steelhead 70.3 that occurred the same day over in Michigan. Of course, this is presuming that their swim course wasn’t short or long or had a massive current. I chose Steelhead because the swim is unidirectional and perfectly straight. If there is any course in triathlon that has an exact swim course length this is it. There has occasionally been a current flowing in lake Michigan and the organizers will swap the direction of the swim to ensure that athletes don’t have to swim against the current if it exists. I believe this is normally not an issue unless there have been storms on the lake… in any case I heard nothing about current this year and therefore presume there was none. I also made the decision to not include the pro field in the data. It probably messes with the average more than it should because the depth of the pro field is a marker of how much it affects the average.

I simply calculated the average age group swim time and adjusted all the results appropriately. This is not precise, nor perfect, but all I had time for during lunch. The result is that the swim course was approximately 2116 meters long. With 1600 people competing in each race this average time should be a pretty accurate marker of the course length, and to confirm I checked that the histograms also matched well, indicating that it’s not some extraneous times that influenced the results unfairly.

In any case, Stefan likely could have swum below 30 minutes (29:47) and I basically swam exactly my anticipated swim pace with a suggested swim time of 33:16… almost swimming 1:45 / 100meters exactly. Hopefully they get this right for next year.