Ironman Texas (Page 21)

I'm not sure about the Bay's Chapel part, but 1486 is the only place I can remember that would be chip seal. It's not especially rough either. Pretty smooth as chip and seal goes. I have a regular ride that takes me to Dacus and the 6 miles I ride to get back to 105 isn't bad at all. I'll be riding the Richards - Dacus section in the next couple of weeks so I will report back.

I'm hearing this road is pretty brutal for riding, lots of large cracks. Anderson is apparently freshly repaved, so let's hope for that option

Here we go again, talking about the bike course. Hint: it's Texas, it's mostly flat, we're not doing Alpe D'Huez. Why don't we talk about what happens after T2? That's when the real race will begin...

 Do we run on chip seal,   I hate seal's named chip. reminds me of those chipmunks,  

The chip seal section of FM1486 is not more than a couple of miles.  It changes back to asphalt when you hit the Montgomery County line.  The Grimes County portion is chip seal.  It's actually pretty smooth for chip seal if you ride in the lane where the right side tires for cars would be.

In short, don't sweat the chip seal.  It's not as long or as rough as you are thinking.

Great news! 

Not even close. The run will we on concrete pavement either on the road, a paved bike trail, or the walkways surrounding the waterway. None of the seal family will be there, especially chip.

Anybody doing Longhorn?

I'm in for Longhorn. This will be my first HIM.

I'm in for Longhorn as well.

Iron Star was my first 1/2 back in 2005. Not bad. I wasn't too thrilled with the single, water-only bottle hand up they had. I actually wore my Camelbak. Don't know if that has changed or not.

I'll stick with Longhorn. I've done it every year and I'm looking to PR this year. 2008 was my best so far at 4:55:28, but the swim was short that year by at least 3-4 minutes. Even with that, I'm hoping to bust 4:55:00 this year. Besides, you can't beat Keith's races.

I guess the answer depends on what issues you had in the first place.

All the name change meant was that Keith paid WTC some money to use the Ironman brand. It's still him and his crew putting on the race.

The course itself changed quite a bit last year. It's a split transition now. Swim is in Decker Lake with T1 in the same spot as before. Now, T2 is over at the Expo center. The split transition is not a big deal. They give you a T1 bag and you just have to make sure you stuff your goggles/wetsuit/whatever in there before heading off on the bike. They transport the bags over to the Expo center. It makes getting to your car after the race a LOT easier.

The run course runs between the Expo center and the park. There's no grass/trail running, just paved roads. You actually pass through the arena on each lap and the finish line is right in the middle of the arena floor. It's pretty cool, both literally and figuratively. The only downside of the arena finish is that Keith has to use their food service company for the post-race food. That meant no more Freebirds.

last year was 3 handups with gatoraide and water

Got this email today that TYR now has WTC legal swimskins.  We were all talking about these a while back and thought you guys might find these cool. Here is the link: http://trisports.com/tyr-torque.html

Just received this one from DeSoto. Kind of funny, but their descriptions seems kind of snarky! Ha!!!

"It abides to WTC's recent ruling on swimskins, speedskins, swim apparel...whatever WTC wants to call it."

Women's:
http://desotosport.com/products/product.asp?Category=wessentials&Pr...

Men's:
http://desotosport.com/products/product.asp?Category=messentials&Pr...

"Approved for all USAT sanctioned races, and WTC legal for all Ironman and 70.3 races."

The new permitted swinskins are not gonna help with the buoyancy since they're not rubberized, they can only be water repellent. That being said you'll probably shave about 4 seconds of your Ironman swim time by wearing one of these new "speedsuits". Might as well buy nothing, suck it up and swim in a speedo because it won't make any difference (and spend lots of time in the pool if you want to have a good split).

x2 

TYR came by my office last week and I tried on the Torque. It was a bit different than I expected (in terms of material).  I really kinda liked it. I agree that it wont save too much time in the swim, but what I really like is that I can wear my race outfit underneath and not have to fight with clothing in transition. I think that's where the big time savings will be. 

fyi..Blueseventy told me that theirs will be ready by Kona.