Take on the Heat - NEW LOCATION and OW swim

Yep, I'll be there.

I'll be there also. Hopefully, those newly repaired roads have settled in (they put fresh asphalt but not all the way across the road so you have to watch where you are going as the road is uneven with the higher asphalt sections).

didn't notice this either til you guys brought it up. Man I was prepared for a pool this changes things for me a bit. Well good luck to you all. I will see ya there.

Bike portion ended up being pretty dangerous...luckily I was in the first wave of swimmers and didnt have to go through the massive groups of riders I heard about.  I did end up off road at the little round about, managed to keep the bike upright.  I also ended up doing an extra lap on the run unfortunately.

There were plenty of improvement opportunities for this race:

1. Swim course need to be better measured.  I think that swim was VERY short (about 75-100m short) - a lot of people were doing it under 4 minutes!

2. The Transition Area parking lot was painful to run on. Lots of gravel (and it's rough asphalt to begin with).  Swim out (boat ramp) had glass. They need more carpeting if they're doing this race again in the future to help protect people's feet.

3.  They didn't have their kayaks show up.  Logistical issue and they did offer a refund for people who didn't want to do the swim without the kayaks.  A Rescue boat was around with emergency response people (this race benefits the Fire Dept) so there was some emergency people on the water just in case.

4. Bike course has a lot of cracks and uneven pavement, as well as gravel and dirt with all the construction.  They tried to paint a lot of it but passing is dicey as the roads are narrow and windy also.  They also made it even more dangerous by having such a narrow timing mat.  They had some decreasing radius turns that just come up (turnaround in the park) and even allowed an illegally parked truck with a seadoo on a trailer to be positioned right at the exit of a fast turn.  They talked about it on the pre-race meeting  but better warning (a volunteer or signs) would be safer given the course.

Apparently, The Colony is doing a lot of construction so they will likely keep the venue here again next year.  I hope they learn from this first time and dramatically improve next year since the race is so close to me.

Edited by m2tx 2011-08-22 9:28 AM