Xterra Rocky Gap July 12th Race Report

Fantastic course. Really, really good for an Xterra.

0.75 mile swim in 79 degree clear mountain top 240 acre lake. The swim was broken into two segments with a short run in between, which is common for an Xterra.

The 14 mile 2-lap bike was FUN. Really fun, not scary, but appropriately intimidating enough to keep your attention. There were a few tricky technical sections, and a lot of groovy, flowing single track. The course was About 25% paved, 50% single track and 25% grass track or fire road, by time (not by distance) I would guess. The fast guys were probably 31 minutes per lap... my practice laps were about 50 and my race laps probably 45, but I have not checked officiak times yet. No brutal climbs, although there were three sections I had to walk: 1) a short stairway onto the trail head from the road; 2) the infamous Evitt's Revenge Hill, which is not all that long (~300 yards?... I got half way up both laps); and 3) this one full-gnarly rock garden uphill right turn that I took one look at and did not even try.

The run was crazy fun. Super steep rock-stomping in some sections... climbing up on all fours.

I wanted three hours and got 3:06 which was good for 23 of 35 in my age group (M40-44). Fast racers were 2:06, 2:10 or so.

Adequate aid stations with Gu, Gatorade and water, although the last aid station on the run was a welcome sight.

Great pizza afterwards. And primo banannas, jut perfect ripe. Perfect. Not grren and not mushy. Perfect. Who likes green banannas? Plus cookies and M&Ms.

Great weather.... sunny and not too hot, with plenty of shade on the course.

Lots of parking at Ricky Gap State Park, which is about 75 miles from my home in Frederick and probably 2-1/2 hours from DC or Baltimore. I would not want to do the race in one day from Baltimore or DC, but I guess you could from Frederick. I stayed at the lodge for $150 bucks and it was very comfortable, and the dinner buffet with smoked salmon, plenty of veggie-friendly food and Maryland Crab rolls plus carnivore-friendly ribs and prime rib was worth every penny of the 27 bucks they charged. Lot's of people camped, which was pretty convenient.

Now the "cons" .... here is the feedback I sent to race director on improvements:

I think the online race course map identifies the "camp loops" incorrectly .... for instance what you call the S loop and the E loop on your map are actually the H loop and the I loop. See the Rocky Gap Park map at http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/maps/rockygapmap.html. This was only a problem because I came out early to ride the course and it took a little while to correlate your map to the State Park map. The pre-brief and email / web info was good enough to bring this back to a grade 3 (average compared to other races I've run).

Also, timing chips? They make posting results faster, but I am sure they looked into this.

For course support, I thought the security was much less than I've seen for other races ie no wristbands, and no real control in or out of the bike pen late in the race and after the race. I don't think you could have too much trouble, but in a public park that is a lot of pricey harware to leave unattended.

I thought the swim heat starts were a little large (lots of people), but the run at beginning broke up the pack a little. But that first heat was a lot of guys in the water all at once. (there were only three swm starts, and most of racers were in first two).

My buddy ran his first tri at this race today on a loaner bike, and he gave it two thumbs up. I'll be back next year for sure.