I remember seeing a post recently that ECFs are now delayed in processing. My recent history, from employer signature to FSA processing (“PSLF form review”) is:
August 18 -> August 19 (1 day)
September 1 -> September 6 (5 days)
September 30 -> still waiting (7 days so far)
Has anyone had one processed recently? Getting concerned about my last one…
Edit: it sounds like they’ve stopped processing these. Please continue to add data.
Chocolate ice cream with hot fudge sauce; strawberry ice cream with macerated strawberries; vanilla bean ice cream with pineapple cooked in butter and brown sugar, flambéed with cognac. It was an undertaking, but it was so good!
I’m so proud! 🥹
I ate more fettuccini Alfredo and drank less water than I have in my entire life
On my last post, someone said I should try a historical quote in the title
Hope he stubs his toe 🥳
I posted a couple of days about a terrible experience at an event and wanted to give a follow up!
First of all, thanks so much to everyone who commented. It was so encouraging to hear people had encountered the same thing, and I got some great advice.
One of my biggest issues with training is that I live in a small town. If I ever need to go to a bike shop, it’s well over an hour away, the closest triathlon club is an hour and 45, etc. Obviously trying to join a group for an open water swim is not impossible, but it is a huge hurdle.
I did some poking around and found a perfect spot for OWS practice in the next town over, only 30 minutes away…I wish I had figured this out way sooner. It is a public beach with four buoys out that you can use for sighting, and the shallow end is never far away to the point that it feels scary.
I ended up swimming half of a mile, and it felt pretty effortless. The water was a bit choppy, but was absolutely nothing compared to what I encountered on Sunday.
Given the facts surrounding the event: multiple people pulled out of the swim, there had been a tornado warning a few hours prior, they canceled the swims for the longer distances, and someone said the Alcatraz swim was easier than this—I think that I was just faced with unsafe conditions on the day. (Although I am not downplaying the fact that it was stupid for me to try to do open water for the first time on race day.)
Thanks again to everyone that commented! I am glad that I am safe, and I am glad that I found a perfect training spot reasonably close. Onward and upward!
I have been working really hard on triathlon training since 2018. It took me 6 years to be a competent pool swimmer. I started competing in pool swim triathlons in 2024. I’ve always been fine on the swim...slow (2:30/100 yards), below the middle of the pack, but fine. My goal was just to be a functional swimmer, i.e. survive the swim.
In contrast, cycling and running have been going great. I was regularly placing in the top 10% of the cycling portion and top 25% of the running portion. Because the pool swims were so short, I was placing reasonably high overall.
Something happened at the end of last year, and my swims started going better. I didn’t get much faster, but I could go so much further. I ended up swimming as far as 2300 yards nonstop.
I had heard that open water swims are a different animal entirely, but I thought I would give an open water sprint a try. I found one near me that was only 400 meters, which seemed pretty reasonable, considering I could swim five times as far in a pool.
Today was the event, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Yes, it was very stupid to assume I could just hop in an open water swim for the first time on a race. I almost immediately had to grab onto a kayak. I pushed off and managed to make it a bit further, then had to grab onto another kayak. After four or five times, of this, I felt like I was rapidly exhausting myself (and even starting to panic a bit). I even got into a bit of a rhythm one time, but then a wave hit straight in my face and my mouth filled up with water. You can see how awful this was on the map.
I looked at my watch and saw that I had been at it for 12 minutes, and I had completed less than a quarter of the event. I hated to do this, but I wanted to be safe, so I did my first DNF and had the kayak take me back to the start.
It turns out the water was so choppy that they ended up canceling the Olympic and X-50 distance swims after the sprint. I know at least one other person took a DNF on the sprint.
I have plans to take swim lessons and attend open water swim practices, but it’s just so frustrating to be completely in shape, have sunken tens of thousands of dollars into this sport, and still not be able to complete an open water tri. Any words of encouragement, success stories after difficulties, etc., would be much appreciated.