Swimming is a full contact sport

I completely clobbered somebody during the swim of my triathlon on Sunday, and while I have no remorse about the situation, I wish that it hadn't happened.

Let's assume this person was a woman...because it sounds more dramatic that a close to 200 pound 42 year old man comes up from behind a pack and swims right over the top of a woman who might be about half his size and possibly a few years younger than him.

The details of the situation are as old as the day is long--I was in wave 6 of the triathlon.  I had the 9th fastest swim of the day, and the field was 336 people.  The waves were sent off 3 minutes apart, and the swim was advertised to be half a mile long.  In the course of that swim, I first had to pass a crowd of people which appeared to be the intersection of the previous two waves, which I swam through at about the halfway mark.  It was roughly equivalent to playing human dodgeball.  The crowd that I passed through thinned out after another 200 yards or so, and I just had to deal with a less dense smattering of swimmers as I rounded the buoy into the last third of the swim.

All was going fine until about 100 yards out from the finish, as I was breathing to the left, someone smacked into my right side after I'd already committed to a stroke.  The result was the swimming equivalent of a full body slam, and I just kept on my way.  The nearest I could tell, this person was swimming diagonally across the course, and literally came out of nowhere.  There was no forewarning, there was no intention to hit another swimmer, and lastly, there was no stopping to apologize.  I kept going to get to the end of the swim.

This doesn't happen to me every triathlon--it probably doesn't even happen once a year.  But it happens frequently enough that you would think there would be some way to deal with it.  You can go through any number of scenarios to alleviate that situation, but the simple motivating factor is that the sport of triathlon does not care about the swim.  Any race director's primary goal with the swim is making sure that everybody gets through it alive.  The majority of competitors vying for the top spots in triathlon have grown accustomed to the swim not really mattering in where the final tally winds up at for determining who won.

I've had visions of race directors setting up a "fast swimmers wave," where anyone who might be in my situation could swim ahead of the crowds, making the swim more pleasant for all.  This vision is quickly destroyed by the reality that triathlon has a requirement that everyone in an age group leave at the same time to ensure proper competition for age group awards.

I've also had visions of triathlon balancing the sports more equitably.  On Sunday, my swim took 12 minutes, the bike was 46 minutes, and the run was 40 minutes.  How would everyone like to do a sprint triathlon that starts with a 2 mile swim?

Or an Ironman triathlon that's a 12,000 meter swim followed by an 80 mile bike ride and a marathon run?  People would die.  Literally.

There's no fixing this, and there's no need to fix it.  There's no possibility I'm ever going to be part of the elite/pro wave that would take me out of this scenario, so I'm just going to go about my business, and probably be the source of the legend of 40-44 male wave of swimmers hell-bent on swimming right over the top of everyone in their way.

In the meantime, I'll just work on my spotting, and try to avoid as many full body slams as possible.