“I swam MUCH straighter with SwimStraight” - Oceanside race day analysis from Team Zoot’s Bryan Dunn
Bryan Dunn has been racing triathlon’s since 2006, completing 76 events over varying distances, conditions, and terrains, with Oceanside 70.3 being his latest finish line that he proudly crossed, on April 6, 2024.
A Team Zoot captain, Bryan was a member of the original Zoot Ultra Triathlon Team back in 2008 through 2013, and has been in his current role as Team Zoot Southwest Captain since then to present day. Team Zoot is now a team of over 5000+ athletes across the US.
Work To Be Done
Bryan entered the sport of triathlon as a runner and swam as a kid. Today he classes his strongest discipline as the bike, which was new to him back in 2006. When it comes to what he works on most these days, it’s the swim.
Being an early adopter of our FORM Smart Swim 1 goggles, Bryan trains solo in his local pool a minimum of three times per week, swimming at least 12,000 yards. His workouts are prescribed by his coach, and he executes them using his FORM goggles.
“I do all my swim training on a base send off, so I watch cumulative time and go on set send offs. So I love seeing my splits at every 50 to gauge my pace and manage my effort appropriately”, said Dunn.
“Swimming is the biggest challenge to most triathletes. Without having a coach on deck making changes to technique can be impossible to identify, qualify, and rectify. FORM goggles make literally every aspect of swim training easier, more understandable, and more actionable.”
With his swimming, something Bryan has observed is, “I find in general I under perform in open water relative to my pool times.” When swimming in open water, until Oceanside, Bryan’s first race of the season, “I watch time and average pace on my goggles.”
Introducing (And Racing With) SwimStraight™
Delivering SwimStraight™, our revolutionary open water digital compass, available on both our Smart Swim 1 and 2 goggles, we anticipated a great deal of excitement around race usage.
Having race approval from World Triathlon, USA Triathlon, the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), and supertri upon our Smart Swim 2 launch on April 2 meant that there was time for Bryan to test and use this brand new feature at Oceanside on April 6.
“I learned about SwimStraight the day you announced it and immediately updated my Smart Swim 1 goggles so I could test it in the pool before the race.”
It passed Bryan’s test and he swam with it at Oceanside. “I used SwimStraight and it worked fantastic and as advertised! I swam MUCH straighter. I wasn't faster but that was more attributable to very crowded swim conditions this year and the course was a bit longer.”
“I really liked sighting, taking note of the degrees to the next buoy, and getting to work. With that peace of mind, I could spend more time maneuvering around people and knowing I wasn't going off course. I used SwimStraight in conjunction with my paired Garmin for real time data.”
He concluded, “It's such a simple and elegant solution to what might seem a challenging problem to solve. I can't imagine anyone who could not benefit from adopting SwimStraight.”
Up Next
Bryan went on to have a great day at Oceanside, exiting the swim in 32 minutes 26 seconds, and finished in a total time of 5 hours 6 minutes 47 seconds.
Since then he’s been back training, has held a camp for his fellow Team Zooters from Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and now has St. George 70.3 in his sights, this coming weekend.
We will be sure to bring more SwimStraight stories as race season gets fully underway in the Northern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, keep up to date with Bryan and his race season on Instagram at JediDunn. Yes, he’s a big STAR WARS fan too.
May the force be with you, Bryan!
Update: May 9th, 2024
The force certainly was with Bryan [on May 4th], as he shaved off 2 minutes 18 seconds from his swim time, again, using SwimStraight.
Over the same course, Bryan clocked in at 33 minutes at 70.3 Worlds at St. George in 2021, while on Saturday he reduced his swim time to 30 minutes 42 seconds.
In the maps below, he remarked, “You can see how much straighter I was, especially coming back in!”
Left: Bryan's St. George swim 2021, Right: Bryan's St. George swim 2024
