drkelly
(David
) and the wife and I met up Saturday morning to pre-ride the course. The first lap was planned to be taken easy as the wife is not a fast rider. We were cruising along chatting and having a good time. The second lap David and I did alone and we got the chance to push a bit harder.
The first mile or so right out of transition is pretty much uphill. Not steep, just long. As soon as you get onto Couch Dr, it turns into small bumpy country roads. We came up on 2 dogs sitting in the middle of the road. Figuring we were about to be in a sprint, we rolled past the dogs and they didn't budge. Weird. Saw 2 turkeys on the 2nd loop.
Some small rollers Old Mill, 317, and 325. Roads are slightly bumpy but not horrible. It is chip seal but rather old so it has been flattened a bit and not as bad as it could be. I didn't notice any of the corners being too gravelly as mentioned and felt I could take most them pretty fast. But please don't blame me if some gravel is there.
Right at the end of 325 there is a nice downhill onto 318. Problem is once on 318 it immediately goes up hill and you find out how 318 is. 318 is the worst of the whole course. Bumpy the whole way. Really saps the speed from the legs. Luckily it is short.
Luckily 546 is nice and pretty smooth in most parts. It is a 2 lane road though with no shoulder. This means the lane won't be closed for us on a race day
(at least I doubt they'd be closing the whole road
). This means we'll need to be extra careful passing people that there is not a car right on our tail. There are some good little rollers for the first part of 546 then it flattens out near the airport.
The trip back to the high school gives you that long downhill from before so a nice chance to make up time or recover a bit. Only other notable spots of potential problem are the railroad tracks on Millwood and Elm St. They were both slightly rough with some parts being worse than others.
Back at the cars
(transition
) we decided to do a short brick. I had the map of the run course with the plan running out the first mile and back to get a feel for it. We couldn't find the bike/hike trail mentioned behind the school. We ended up wandering through some fields then a neighborhood and finally stumbled upon it. Haha. We found the 1st mile marker from last year and headed back.
Checking out the real first mile on the way back, there are several spots of water on the trail. It appears this water is here a lot because they were actually rather slick and mossy. Be careful here. I almost went down once. One other spot there was a ton of water and what appeared to be some carpet or something over it. The material was actually floating and when I landed on it, it started moving and I somehow prevented going down. Careful on that thing. We finally reached where we were supposed to get on the trail. It is a dead end
(start
) of the trail behind the track. There appears to be a short jog through the grass behind the track to even get to this bike path for the race. This first mile at least seemed pretty much flat. No idea what the rest will be like.
I'm only doing the bike leg in a relay on Sunday, but I'll see everyone else out there.
Edited by tajsss 2008-04-21 9:51 AM