Avalon 1.2-mile Open Water Swim Race Report

 Date: July 11th, 2021

Location: Avalon, NJ

2021 Endurance Event: 5

Conditions: 74 degree water, wetsuit legal, Helping tide

As soon as I completed the Stone Harbor sprint triathlon, I packed everything up and rode back to our house, which is less than a mile from the race site.  I did a little reorganizing and then Judy and I drove north on the Island to 21st street for the start of this OWS race.  A bit crazy to do a triathlon at 7am and then do an OWS at 10 but that was what this day had on tap.

The swim was billed as a 1.2-mile point-to-point swim through the inter-coastal waterway from around 21st street in Avalon, down to Avalon Yacht Club.  I had done this swim or a very similar one 2x before and as I recall, my times varied from 24 to 38 minutes--which illustrates the huge impact the tides have on the time it takes to complete this swim.  I didn't know how strong the tide would be this year but given how high the water looked, it seemed we were likely to get at least some push as the tide level would be clearly heading down after a high tide peak.

There were a few other loonies doing both races and a total of 79 swimmers entered in total.  The start was a self-seeded time trial start and I decided to start towards the back as I was chatting with some of the other competitors and its kinda fun to swim pass slower swimmers throughout the race.

When my time came, I went down the stairs, across the timing mat and jumped in.  There isn't much to report on a far as the swimming goes except to say I felt nice and strong the whole swim and passed lots of earlier starters and didn't get passed by anyone.  I caught Stef and Bonnie (a couple of my training partners) at the big left-hand turn near 7th (about 2/3rds through the race) and figured I must be having a solid swim as they are strong swimmers and had started before me.

As you can see from the Garmin files above, I averaged 1:21/100 yards over the 2,063 measured yards of the course for a total time of 27:50.  Clearly, we all got a nice push from the tides as alas, I am not a 27-minute Half-Ironman swimmer.  If you look at the first 500 split above (8:28) and compare to the next three (5:47-6:46) you can get a sense for how much the tide was helping this morning as the tidal push really kicks in when you make the first left-hand turn into the main channel.  Also, I think the tidal push was getting stronger (which it does as you get further away from high tide) as the race unfolded (this means I got an advantage starting towards the back).

My guess is I got somewhere between 6 and 8 minutes of push this morning, meaning I was probably swimming in the 34-36 minute range for a H-IM swim distance.  This would be consistent with what I had done the week before at the Freedom Mile swim.

Overall I finished 25th out of 79 (69.6 %-tile) and 2nd out of 6 (83.3 %-tile) in my Age Group.  Both of these relative placings seem pretty consistent with my typical local OWS race results.  I did also look at the times of six people I know who swam last year and this year and they were from 13 to 26% slower this year (less tidal push) with an average of 19.5% slower.  I was 17.4% slower and while this is hardly scientific, it does seem like a good swim and maybe even a bit stronger than I did last year.

Finally, a picture with Judy post race--happy to race twice (notice the two different race numbers!) and be done before 11am!