Im Lou...

[HillSlugger]

Thats another reason why the water noodle thing at the danskin races bugs me so much.

???

When I decided I wanted to get into triathlon the first thing I did was sign up for swim lessons at the Y. It wasn't until I could swim 30 laps that I decided I was ready to sign on the dotted line.

I signed up first, and then started swimming lessons a few months later. For me, I needed to sign up first, to make it real and to set that stake in the ground: "You need to be ready for THIS event on THIS date" (I'm not so good with vague goals). The first tri I signed up for was Iron Girl; when I realized how poor a swimmer I was I began having second thoughts and signed up for the shorter tri. For me, I see needing to take small steps towards a longer triathlon: short sprint, longer sprint, olympic, etc. That's just me and my overly logical way of going about life. I'm sure some people need a big kick in the @ss to get started and an HIM or IM might be what's right for them. Hopefully the do respect the distance (or learn to respect the distance), otherwise they could get hurt and bring others down with them.

[KSH]

But I guess I want to say that I think that this was a little hitch in the process here, caused by trying to adapt to the water/current situation. I looked at the results and only 3 people are listed as having a time greater than 17:00. These people know the rules and they know that they are not ironmen. We know they are not. I don't think that it sets a precedent for watering down the Ironman overall.

Silver, the cut off at IMKY was 12:30 ish... so about 17:30 hours due to the TT swim start. Which is fine... although they needed to track WHO came in at or under 17 hours... but whatever.... so some people did indeed race longers than 17 hours and get a medal.

My story was in reference to a lady... I read her race report on another site... and she was on the run course and they said she wasn't going to make the 17:30 cut off... so they took her timing chip.

She still finished the course and came in at 18:00... and she still got a medal. Now, that's just not right.

The organizers of the race aren't there to make everyone who is out there feel all warm and fuzzy about themselves. If you didn't make it in under 17:30 (for IMKY) then you didn't deserve a medal.