Lake Norman State Park Triathlon - TriathlonLong Course

This was a great swim, actually the best I've had all year. I enjoyed the time trial start and actually managed to latch onto a person that swam at the same pace I do. I rode his feet the entire race and it sure made my day easier, I mostly let him site (once I determined he was keeping a great line). Because of the start there wasn't much bumping or jostling, except at the turns. The only two real downsides to the swim were the fact that the turn back home had us swimming directly into the sun, so you could not see anything. And the long trek up from the beach to T1. Neither of these are the fault of the race directors, and simply one of those things you deal with.

I had a great swim and am happy with the performance

Gotta get faster

As usual, don't believe it when they call a bike course "flat". The roads out of and back into the park were very hilly and there were a few rollers on the course itself. There was a HUGE hill at mile 13 that really caught us all by surprise.
Overall, the course was very nice. Roads were semi-rough (chat style asphalt) and were not closed, so we did have cars driving by on occasion.
The scary part was back in the park. I caught up to two park ranger trucks that were impeding bike traffic and I had to take a chance and go around them so I didn't lose all of my momentum after coming down one of the big hills.
Also, the last 3/4 mile is a large downhill right into transition. This gets tight because the run course is on the left side of the road. About half way down, a truck for some reason was in the road and turned so he blocked almost the entire road! I grabbed my brakes and actually had to swerve into the run course to avoid smashing into the back of the truck. Lastly, the dismount was right at the bottom of the hill, so you had to try and do a quick slow down and dismount to avoid penalty. Not sure what the race could do, but this did cause a few crashes.

Continue to spend time on the bike. I could definitely do better and the fact that I've been slacking on my bike work showed.

This time, I was in and out pretty quickly

My running has been off this season. Probably because of the extra weight that I've been carrying this year. Had to walk half of the final hill, but still gave a good effort overall

This was the first year for this event, so I will cut them slack and assume they will learn and improve. I enjoyed the event overall, but here are suggestions that would make things better.

1. ensure that there are no cars for the park section of the bike. The road is too narrow to safely navigate especially with all the hills.
2. change the end of the bike course so you're not dismounting right at the end of the hill. Move the bike in next to the bike out, so that the bikes circle the parking lot and have a chance to decelerate.
3. It's a big park, is there really no way to make a single circuit run course? Also, don't have a sharp right turn at the bottom of a big hill into the finish. I witnessed more than a few people lose their footing and fall there.
The food was not great, and it's a disservice when your pizza doesn't show up until 2:25:00 after the race starts (with no announcement). I finished just under 2 hours and then didn't get pizza because it was not there and by the time I saw other people eating it, there was none left! Very disappointing.