Joe I took your advice and let me say thank you.   I looked into getting some training on the swim and found a local training facility that speializes in competitive swim ( indoors of course). Yeah, I'm in swimming lessons, I admit it.   Had my first training class today and was given drills to do for an hour, thought i was going to die.   I definatly would not have had a good experience on my "first event" going in with out being prepared for a .5 mi swim.  Anyway I signed up for a 6 month contract and plan to make my weakest leg my strongest for next year.  Thanks again

I started this thread with intentions of doing a sprint TRI.  Thanks to all for shedding some light on the swim portion of the race.  Last weekend I participated in my first event, an adventure duathlon which consisted of a 2 mi bike, 8 mi run, and 2 mi bike (all off-road).  We were running/biking thru 6 to 10 inches of mud/water/slop for about 80% of the course. went off course twice, so lost time and effort once on the first run and again on the bike(the course was flagged orange for run and pink for bike--it all looked the same when the sun hit it).  I dont know the times of each individual leg but my overall time was   1:28:41 which placed me 17 of 30 in my age group 30 -39.  even though this was a duathlon and not a triathlon I trained for the swim (just because I need swim time for next years TRI events).  My training for the run and bike was always on asphalt so I definately was not prepared for the terrain.  some of the course we had to walk our bikes thru the slop.  Overall the conditions were horrible it was WET and COLD but I didnt care, I had the time of my life out there, It was fun,really fun.  I can not wait to do it again next year.