My friend, Scott Dewire, had a very scary swim experience at Ironman Coeur d’Alene. His wife, Rebecca, wrote about it in her blog.
The important thing is that Scott is safe and sound; but, hearing him tell the terrifying experience of his swim makes me sick to my stomach. The short story is that within minutes of his swim he was pummeled and hit hard over and over again and could just not get any air and starting taking in water and seriously thought he might drown. He experienced his first ever panic attack and tried to get help from the kayaks. He said there was just no way the kayaks could get to him and other swimmers around him noticed that he was in trouble and offered to help. [ read full article ]
First of all, I am so very glad that Scott is okay! Secondly, this story scares the hell out of me. Scott is young, male, incredibly athletic and has two ironmans under his belt already. So if this can happen to him, it can happen to anybody!
My plan for my own Iron distance race this fall, B2B, was to try and get in a really good swim split so that I could get ahead of the throngs of slower bikers. I have never minded contact in the water. But I’ve never been in the water with 1000’s of other swimmers. The female “midlife crisis age group” – of which I am a member – is pretty tame when it comes to the triathlon swim. But now I am rethinking my swim strategy. I should probably play it safe and stick to one side of the pack, to avoid the risk of getting pummeled like Scott did at IM CDA.
I hope Scott can once again enjoy the triathlon swim.
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Wow, I'm glad he was ok, I had no idea anything like that happened. I was out there in the water too, and I had the opposite experience. I have had panic attacks before during the swim (olympic distance), and I could not believe how calm I was for this swim! I can't say I didn't get hit or anything, but it was also less brutal than I thought it would be swimming with 2100 other people! It was really weird how calm I was, even when I realized that if something did happen, the kayakers wouldn't be able to get over to me. There were so many people! It was an amazing experience.
I don't know when Scott got in, maybe he was at the front of the pack with the more competitive people. I made sure to stay back and get in towards the back of the group. Maybe this is what made our experiences so different, but maybe it was just luck. Who knows.
The swim at B2B was no big deal, don't worry!!!! Initially it was hard to swim out into the channel because of the current and the other swimmers (I remember doing some tarzan like swimming initially), but once you swing right and are into the channel the swim rocked! Seriously, not one person touched me...I think there were 500 people at the inaugural race.