Subject: RE: Ironman Coeur d'Alene : Official Threaddavide - 2011-08-02 4:46 PM Hey, has any of the IMCDA'er done the Full Vineman in Sonoma, CA, last Saturday? On Sunday I was riding the bike course (yeah, I got a few hours off after babysitting the entire day on Sat while my wife was racing ) and on Chalk Hill, the toughest climb on the course, I spotted a sign which read something like this: "Though hill? Honey Badger does not give a ...". Either one of us did the race, or our mascot has been plagiarized!  My husband and I both did IM CDA in 2010, and he did Vineman full this past July. Compared to IM CDA, the Vineman swim was cake- it's in the Russian River and has wave starts, so definitely less contact. And his Vineman swim was 10 mins faster than his IM CDA swim time- no sighting was needed which was a huge time saver for him. He said Chalk Hill sucked- he thought the Vineman course was tougher than the CDA bike course. I think it's because we didn't have the Vineman type hills to train on. We were told the Vineman course wasn't as bad as CDA, so trained on less hills. Hindsight 20/20, he should have trained on more hills but at least now we know. The Vineman run is 100% more hilly than the CDA was. He said that you were always going up or down- never got a break from the hills. He thought the run was very tough. Good luck with Vineman- I had a blast spectating and enjoying all the wineries after the race. It was a great trip for us! |