Scandal!

Oh. My. God. This could be huge. HUGE!.

According to Rachel, who was part of the Disney Hawaii 70.3 party-machine, there was an error with some of the swim times at Nautica. It seems that some people were timed starting with the previous waves, essentially adding 5 minutes to their posted swim times. Was I one of those people? I'm doing some detective work...

My posted time was 20:20. In my 4 previous races, I've done 14:50-18:07. So it is a little odd that I would be 2 minutes slower than my slowest swim. Odd, but not impossible. I was very cold and had not practiced at all in my wetsuit. On the other hand, the water was very calm compared with other years and it did not feel like a long swim to me. But I really have no sense as to what a 15 minute swim vs. a 20 minute swim feels like.

(Bear with me, there will be some math) I was wearing a watch, but I did not check my time coming out of the water. I do have some interesting data points though. My watch was about 1 minute slower than the official race start times: my wave was supposed to go off at 7:40 and the last time I checked my watch it said 7:41. I checked my watch again as I started to wheel my bike out of the transition area and I THINK it said 8:02. My posted T1 time was 5:17. That's not good, but that's very typical for me. Now then, if I had a 20-minute swim, in order for me to be leaving transition at 8:02 that would mean I had a 2-minute T1 time. Come on now, seriously? I'm a spaz in transition. I can barely put my helmet on in 2 minutes. Let's suppose my watch-start-time was actually 7:41:30. After a 15:20 swim I'd arrive in T1 at 7:56:50. After 5:17, It would be 8:02:07. The math works. But I can't absolutely rule out the possibility that maybe I actually checked my watch while I was still getting out of my wetsuit and was in transition for a few minutes after that. I am 99% sure that wasn't the case though.

So the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that my swim time is incorrect. I know that technically the time doesn't matter; this was not my A-race for the year. Nor a B-race. But those 5 minutes are the difference between my WORST performance ever at Malibu, and a Personal Record. And frankly, if I did PR that would be a really nice confidence boost leading up to Kona. (It's kind of a tough pill to swallow that at the end of my Ironman training I'm slower than than I was other years.)

I will call the race-timing officials tomorrow. If they can look up on the computer and tell me that Men 40-44 started at 7:40 and my chip started at 7:35, then I know there was an error and I will have them adjust the time. But if they can't verify the early start then I'm not comfortable with requesting a change in the official results. Hopefully it will not be an issue.

And here's something else to consider: Jon Coward didn't race this year. Is it possible he volunteered to do the timing chips? Very interesting...