Just looked at some of the results form Havasu. That course short or are college kids really getting that fast?
After searching around on Garmin Connect, I see swims from 1370 to 1600m, the bike between 23.3 and 23.8mi, and the run at 6.03 to 6.15mi. They’re still certainly getting fast though!
Well, both. It was an extremely fast day with near perfect conditions. There is a slight current in the channel which greatly aided swim times. In addition, a ferry boat displaced our turnaround buoy about 10 minutes before the race started resulting in an error of about 50 yards total.
But as to how fast collegiate athletes are getting, our bike course has remained the same for 10 years. It was not until 2 years ago that anybody broke an hour. Now it happens regularly. Our men’s winner, Rudy Von Berg, is going to be a top 5 finisher at Collegiate nats and certainly challenge Ben Kanute.
The Garmin data certainly reflects the inherent inaccuracy of using a Garmin to measure a race course. For a very interesting article on why GPS measurements are, while great training aids, actually not very accurate, go to http://www.cincyhalfmarathon.com/GPS Accuracy.pdf