2009 Steelhead 70.3

I signed up for this and it will be my first 70.3. I may be in over my head but there's a lot of time from now until then. Anybody have any good advice on hotels in the area? or about the course, town, or anything else in general?

Roads were fine, and many sections of excellent

Man I wish I would've read all the negative race reports before I impulsed registered for this. I just assumed it would be a top notch event with the "Ironman" name behind it.

With that said, somebody, anybody please tell me there are going to be changes made this year and I shouldn't let all the neg. reports bring me down. This is a pretty big bummer.

Even if there are no changes made...well, it would be nice to have calm water for a swim...I would not hesitate to lay down the money to do this race again.  I honestly believe that some of the descriptions I read above were not from the same course I raced this summer.  Believe me, where I train here in NW Wisconsin we have some pretty sh!tty roads and at no time did the word "terrible" enter my mind to describe the Steelhead roads either while racing the bike course or at anytime afterwards while talking to racers.  I was in wave 8 and I never saw anything near the amount of bike-related garbage on the road that some evidently did.  Don't worry, you didn't waste your money.

Maybe I missed something, but unless racers took care of packet pickup the previous weekend in Chicago you had to rack your bike on Friday before the race, so having to deal with a bike on race morning should have been a non-issue for 99.5% of racers.  I thought the parking at the shuttle area was convenient and the shuttle to the T area was a piece of cake.

I've done it the past two years and I would say this years roads were better than last. Far from perfect but I have rode much worse.

Top notch event. First year was perfectly calm water and then this year was surf city.

You didn't waste your money, enjoy it.

 Do Racine instead. I signed up for this as my "A" race this summer... thinking it would be a really classy event put on by NA sports... since it's part of the 70.3 series... but it was just your usual great big giant triathlon, with blatant drafting and blocking on the bike...and no one from USAT to enforce the rules.

And they cancelled the swim... horrifying for me.

Edited to add: We did have the coolest group of people, though and the BEST lakehouse. By far. I barely remember the race. It's the fun we had before and after that I remember the most.

Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it. I look forward to the experience.

But what's up with these lakehouses, are they expensive, because I'm just a college kid. I may be having to set up shop at the Super 8 or just a plot of land. is there a website or something I can go to? Sounds like a blast!

Are all the roads you train on nicely paved?  If they are, then you must pay a lot of taxes for them to be that way.  They are fine, so fine that I think I still managed to get a 23 mph average on the bike.  Some road have crack and they were a couple of pot holes but they were marked.  Yeah there was a lot of people out there on the roads but we managed.

The swim issue was mother natures fault, nothing that could be done about that.

Don't worry about it, just focus on getting some lodging and then on your training.