A 2nd, Accurate, 2023 GR Sprint Triathlon Race Recap

Omg, alert the press! The nation's largest true crime case has been solved! I got my fair and square actual, accurate time officially updated from the GR Sprint Tri. 

I know those 2 questionable minutes were keeping America up at night. Trust me, SAME. I'm thrilled I went on a calm, one-woman crusade for justice.

In case you're new to the case, my official results from the swim seemed slow. 2 minutes slower than what I clocked on my watch, which is a big enough deal when my (actual) overall swim time was 12 min, 6 seconds. Compounding my concern was the results claiming I was in the water at 7:00:01--RIGHT at the race start time--when, thanks to a smart wave entry for swim start--I was about 2 minutes behind the first bodies in the water.

Ok, so now you know the background. Let's dive into evidence...

First--in a I-can't-let-this-go tizzy I posted on the triathlon Facebook page asking if anyone else noticed a slow swim time claiming they were in at the exact start time. After awhile someone commented: Yes, this happened to me too, at a different tri but one that used the same timing company. Email the timing company directly.

GREAT, a lead. Of course I email the timing company.

Second--I tell pretty much everyone I know, and their cousins and their mailmen, how I feel like the timing was wrong. I'm a big time process-by-talking person, but this time around continuously telling the story just amped me up more.

So, while amped up, I spot checked the results for anyone else with a 7:00:01 start time. And wouldn't you know, just checking the top 5ish finishers in each age group, I found 3 others. Plus my brother and I, that's 5 competitors whose official results say they started at 7:00:01. This is the smoking gun because the race is diligent about starting swimmers 2 at a time, about 3-5 seconds apart. There would never be a case where 5 of us are running into the water at the same time. 

... you can only imagine how insane I'm getting at this point with this new information. I'm basically insufferable.

Then I get an email response. It's from one of the race organizers saying she's forwarded my email to the timing guy. Ok. We wait.

While we wait I'm definitely calm. I've certainly moved on with my life. No way am I pouring over the swim results in depth to ID that with a corrected swim time I would have likely been 2nd in the swim in my age group, not 8th. Not a chance I played the race back over in my mind to think about how I might have failed to cross the timing start line and properly trigger my ankle timing chip. Nope. I carried on with my busy life just fine. 

This weekend I got a response. Times have been updated. Everything should be squared away now. You wouldn't believe how fast my little fingers navigated over to that timing app... just to see...

JUSTICE PREVAILS! 

If I were splitting hairs, which of course I'd never, I'd tell you about the response back from the timing guy--and how he said times have all been corrected, most were just a difference of 1-3 seconds, and the top 5 (overall) finisher times were audited for accuracy on race day. You know, as if I wasn't also a worthy competitor who paid my entry fee the same way the top 5 finishers did. Like this 2 min wasn't a big deal just because I'm not a bona fide Big Deal.

But you know me, I'm not one to get hung up on little details...

I'm SO happy I pushed for on this (a tad too obsessively). I'm thrilled with that swim. That swim felt like a 12:06, meaning it felt hard and close to what I did in previous years. And to know that effort was strong enough to take 2nd in my age group (out of 35), 13th female (out of 203), 34th overall (out of 486)--YES. And, of course, my now accurate overall finish time: 1:31:22. That's worth shouting about.