I recieved this email this morning from the race directors. It didn't exactly fill me with confidence. However it did fill me with a little bit of self esteem after my ocean swim debacle. If it gets turned into a duathlon I might skip it. I have doctor's advice that running more than 5k is too much for my knee this early (I am actually pushing it as they are actually saying 5k is too far), plus Colleen's brother and his wife are here for the weekend and I already feel bad about taking up some of their short time here.
The email:
Hello Treeathletes,Disappointing? Yes. Hypothermia!?! Really damn frightening! Makes me worry about the fact I tried to swim the the ocean on Sunday. Seems like a really stupid idea now. I will keep up the exercise as though it is going to happen, but since I really, really hate the cold water - I am not going to cry to much if it doesn't happen. OK now I need to start looking for the next first Tri.
Yet more mail from your race directors here, We wanted to update you on our thoughts about the race as we monitor the weather for this weekend. As you know the Treeathlon is a cold water swim; last year the water was 52 degrees. The water temperature this year is already colder than that at 48, as your race directors and some other brave individuals experienced first hand during our race rehearsal last weekend. Looking at the weather forecast here in the bay area, which calls for very cold temperatures for the rest of this week and potentially even some snow down to sea level on Friday and Saturday, the water will only get colder from here.
Given these conditions we feel it's possible that it will be unsafe to swim this weekend. Hypothermia on the bike is a very real possibility for even those who are fast swimmers (ie in the water only a short time), so if the water gets colder and/or the weather is inclement on Sunday we are going to have to change the race to a duathlon (run bike run). I'd guess the probability of this happening to be at least 50/50, unfortunately. Two possibilities for the race distances are (given as run, bike, run) 5k, 20k, 5k and 1.2 mile, 20k, 5k. We are working on finalizing a duathlon course, and will publish it as soon as it's ready.
We understand that this will be disappointing to many of you, but please believe me that we are interested primarily in the safety and happiness of our racers. So here's to hoping that NOAA is dead wrong in their forecast and it will be 75 and sunny all week!
-Your Optimistic Race Directors
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