Toyota US Open Triathlon - Sprint or Olympic Distance

The overall race is great. Great place and run well. The bike course has changed from last year and the one currently posted on thier website.  Here is the new OLY course. The sprint is the same but dont take the out and back part in the middle. This is more of a loop vs the out and back they had last year. I will be riding it this weekend and will let you know how the roads are.

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/49411604

I have done the race the past two years.  Though, two years ago it was a totally different course going from Grand Prairie to downtown Dallas.  The course at Rockwall is great.  I really enjoyed it.  It has some hills on the bike, but nothing too big to handle.  The bad roads were between miles 6 and 11 on last years course, but according to Newtons1st, it looks like they changed the course to eliminate that.  How do you know this Newtons1st?  Hopefully they did change the course as that section was pretty annoying.  The rest of the roads were great IMO.  

The 1st half mile or so of the run is a good climb.  Be ready.  But, it is an out and back so the last half mile is really fast.  The rest of the run is pretty much up and down.  Not a lot of flat parts, but not steep either. 

The race is great and the site at Rockwall is perfect for a race.  I am looking forward to doing the race again this year. 

Eric

Seems that there is a bike course practice this Saturday (7am) and an OWS practice on Sunday (7am).

I'm planning on being there on Sunday for the OWS.  Anyone planning on running after the swim? I'd like to run the course (perhaps twice) as my long run.

Also, the lake temp for the weekend is about 80F - probably a bit warm for a wetsuit but I may just wear mine to get used to it.  I'm hoping it'll be under 78F to make it wetsuit legal in Oct so I can compare my results to last year (it was my first and only Oly-distance tri).

Lots of people won't be wearing wetsuits.  Last year, none of the pros did, and also a significant number of Age Groupers.

The water won't be cold enough to NEED a wetsuit

Water temp is currently 80 according to the US Open facebook page.  Also major construction on I-30, so they are strongly recommending alternate routes if you're driving in. 

I rode the OLY course on Satuday, and the biggest hills are leaving T1 and then coming back in as you finish the course.  So from the race site, it looks scary, but overall is not.  There are a few rollers on the rest of the course, but not bad at all.  Parts of the course had some major gravel, but the folks from LT Fitness said that would be cleaned up by race day.

Good luck to everyone racing!     

Yes - water temp will be right at the border next weekend.  Weather is still cooling down so I suspect it will be several degrees lower.  In fact, there was a noticeable temp difference between this last Sunday and a couple of weekends ago.  I actually thought that the water temp this past weekend was below 80F - at least in the morning when we were in it. 

The Oly bike course as we rode it was awful.  Easily the worst bike course I've seen on a triathlon.  There were a lot of cracks in those small roads. Passing will be iffy since some of the cracks are in the middle of the road.  There were sections when the road has major cracks and falling off on the right so I know people will be riding in the middle over there.   We even had about half a mile on unpaved roads - yes no asphalt at all - just gravel.  The hope is that it will be paved (and cured/dry) by race weekend.

It finally gets better when we get on John King - now that's a nice road.  Since John King goes North-South, there will likely be a tailwind going out then a headwind coming in. The rest of it (after turning on Airport) isn't bad and was the same as last year.

I wasn't able to run past the first mile of the run course as Summer Lee past Ridge is blocked off due to major construction.  There's that big hill at the start but I think the rest of the course has some slight inclines but that's about it.

I'll be there on Saturday for packet pick-up.  They have a swim practice at 1pm so I will do a short swim again.  Forecasts indicate that race temps will be in the mid-low 50F's (air temp) so I'm curious how that's going to feel on the bike (it will be awesome on the run).

Yeah, facebook page actually said the temp is "predicted" to be 80 on Sunday, not that it was the current temperature.  It has felt noticeably cooler in GV Lake the last couple of weeks too, and my sleeveless wetsuit felt good on Friday, so perhaps their prediction is a bit high.

Was that unpaved section actually part of the course?  I got confused on what was course and what was detour on Saturday.  Maybe they will pave it with some nice fresh chip and seal. 

Anyone know how to contact the race director for this one?  Can't find it anywhere on their site.

I wondered about that.  Seemed like I read a couple weeks ago the water temp was 76, and I couldn't figure out how it could shoot up to 80 by Sunday.  Hope your right....I much more enjoyed my last OWS in the wetsuit. 

I'll confirm the statements about the bike course.  I drove it today and there were large cracks, significant buckling of asphalt and even portions of the road that were gravel.  On top of that a few railroad crossings.  Most of the bad was in the first 8 miles but I was pretty shocked to see a fairly unsafe course for such a large event in my opinion. 

Driving back to Dallas I also saw the signs about I-30 being closed.  HWY 80 to the south is an option for those going coming from Dallas/points west.

This was posted on slowtwitch for the US Open.  

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fishboat/fish/action/reptform2.php?lake=RAY+HUBBARD&archive=latest&yearcat=current&Submit=Go

But, it also shows the same for Grapevine.

Those water temps that are on the fishing site that say 70 degrees are just an estimated temp based on their algorithms.  Here is some info on it:

Fishingnotes.com has developed a highly accurate and sophisticated water temperature modeling algorithm to determine the mean daily water temperature based on climatic and geophysical data for this lake. Some of the variables used to determine the mean daily water temperature include past weather trends, solar radiation, evaporation, lake size, and lake geometry.

I guess we can just prepare to swim without the wetsuits and consider it a nice gift if we are allowed to use them.

Bib numbers came out today.  I'm number 747.  I kind of like that number.

As far as the road conditions go...it is what it is.  Don't worry about.  Nothing you can do about it.  Stay positive.  Keep your head up and watch the road.  When you get to the rough patch, play like "Paris-Roubaix", shift to a higher gear and power across the the rough stuff.

Good luck everyone.