Age Group Nationals - Omaha

I'm in the same boat. There's a good post on ST about it - pretty much convinced me that I'll be going. The negatives I saw were that there was a lot of traffic to get to course on race day, the T1 is incredibly long, and that the run was super hot. I'm thinking the heat won't be much of an issue as I (like you) train here in TX. Folks seemed to be positive on Omaha.

Edited by LundyLund 2016-10-13 3:57 PM

I live in Omaha and did it this year and got my e-mail saying I qualified for next year. I'm always curious what people think of this little place. Anyway, on topic:

I'll break it down of how I experienced it:

Check in:
Was super super simple. I was in and out within a few minutes. Was super surprised. The area was huge and they even put up stands for people to watch the finishers. No parking was allowed on site since it rained the night before and it was a grass parking lot, so I had to walk/ride my bike ~.5 miles to check the are. I survived... wew.

Race Morning:
Traffic sucked. I got there right when it opened and I'm glad I did. They started the race 15 minute late because so many people were late. If it rains the before or the day of, I have no idea what they will do. That will be a nightmare.

Swim:
The lake we swim at isn't known as the best lake to locals but I was surprised. They built a giant starting platform to hang off of and then go. My swim was horrible since I was leaking the entire time and literally had to stop every 3rd stroke to get that lake water out of my eyes. Was super pissed about how my goggles went from fine to crap instantly somehow. Swim was a one loop course and pretty easy.

T1:
As others said, it was LONG. I ran in my shoes and I wouldn't do this if I were you. They did have boards and such outside on transition but you still had another ~100yd to the street. My feet hurt from this. I'll be trying the shoes on bike thing next year.

Bike:
Roads were all repaved for this event. Super smooth. It's a hilly route though.

T2:
Again long

Run:
Not very interesting. Going to the stadium but the streets you're on aren't the best at all. There's better routes but I'm sure they wanted to have one interesting thing to run by.

Post race:
I was in the first wave but the last wave started like 2-3 hours after me. This meant that no one was allowed to leave until 1:30. Sooo....I was done and we just waited around for 3 hours until we could go. They have did some a pretty good food selection at the end. Water ran out at the end though.

Weather:
I kept hearing a lot of out of towners complain about the heat and humidity. It was low 80's that day in a summer that had a TON of ~100 days. So it felt nice (well...nicer) to me. Humidity was at ~60%. Yeah it was warm but it's summer. If live in a desert and aren't used to any humidity, then be prepared to be uncomfortable.

I never did a RR because I was sick during it and was 10-15+ minutes off my expected/goal time. I thought it was a good race. Everything seemed to be professionally done.

Edited by Blastman 2016-10-13 6:22 PM