This was my second tri and I had a rough experience with my first one, including a bit of panic and doubt. This one went so much better. Bouys were on the left (which was great for me as I like to breath to the left). I stayed to the right and had minimal contact with other swimmers. The course was set up as a triangle, with heading towards deeper water and looping back towards the start at the mid-way point. The last bouy was yellow and hard to see, I saw lots of people turning early (hopefully all accidental). This swim felt much better to me than my time reflected, but I was just happy to have a positive experience with the swim.

T1 includes a .3-.4 mile run, with two very steep hills. Coming out of the swim a mini-transition for shoes is available. Basically both sides of the road are lines with tape and race numbers in order. If you are lucky your number is towards the bottom of the hills, if not you are towards the top. I was right around the middle. I also keep a bottle of water to grab, so I could hydrate here and not have to worry about drinking on the bike as much.

This is certainly the low-light of this course, but at least they subtract this from the run distance at the end!

I loved this course. It is very beautiful and a super smooth road, hilly with very little flat periods. I was passed twice towards the end of the second loop. I felt great on the bike, certainly the better part of my race. Lots of first timers on the course and passing was a bit tricky at points, with people all over the road. I probably had to do some light breaking about three times due to congestion, but everyone was very friendly on the course.

A fairly long paved entrance into transition from the dismount line. I switched to speedplay cleats recently and had trouble with the run out, so I went ahead and kicked my shoes off and ran in my socks. Probably would have gone better if I had planned this vs spontaneously doing it, but it worked okay.

The run started off okay for me, did a few minutes of walking on the loop back as I was getting a little light headed. It's a nice course, but there aren't any mile markers on it and the course map on the website was hard to follow to try and map out the miles before hand. I had some trouble without the mile markers, I wasn't able to really think through how far I was (or wasn't) into the run. Still have lots of work to do with my run, but at least I'm moving in the right direction! My husband and 6 y/o daughter were cheering throughout the course, and it made such a difference in helping me get through the run. I kept thinking about how my daughter woke up at midnight and got dressed to go because she was so excited (don't worry, she fell right back asleep)!

There were a lack of water stations at the beginning/end of the course. I wish I had carried a bottle of water with me!

Walked around a bit.


This is a beautiful course and a nice size event. This is a great spectator course, good views on the swim, able to see twice on the bike course, and easy to see twice on the run course. Trek Women is now owned by Danskin, and I was given a $20 off coupon after Danskin to do this race. I don't know if I would have wanted to pay $80 for it, but $60 was perfect. Not much extras, but lots of nice energy. There are lots of camp grounds, cabins and RV area. They have a vision of people coming out for the weekend, and I could certainly see bringing the family out and making a camping trip out of it in the future.