Congrats! Ironman.  I was at mile 20 station and would have been there when you came by .

Ironman #10 for me.

I concur with many of your observations.

1) Banquet / athlete briefing - ran long as hell, didn't get back to the hotel 'til late. And since I was trying to maintain a 3am wake-up schedule, the later this ran the worse it was. And the briefing was... minimal at best. Leave out the jokes and banter, brief us and move on. And start on time.

2) Ironman highly encouraged us to ride our bikes to transition. I think I was one of 5 idiots who did that. Not marked AT ALL (and the map said turn on a street that was not marked on the bike path, hence another 3 miles of riding for me) Inconvenient as heck. TAKE THE FERRY TO TRANSITION, DO NOT RIDE THERE.

3) Swim - actually, not that bad - I was the second person off the 1st barge, so it was cool. Having to get up at 3am to catch the 4 am ferry, to then wait 1 hour in transition to leave to the swim start... not so much fun. Fast course, easy to navigate - I'm a right side breather so it was nice to not stare into the sun for part of the course (utah among others) Favorite swim course? No, but for racing, pretty good. For sight seeing, it was no Florida (I hear coz in november is gonna be awesome).

4) Transition. I got to the tent fairly early (1st set of swimmers in the water, 58min swim time) and the volunteers didnt seem to have much direction. I've done inaugurals at texas and utah, and both had volunteers much more engaged. I echo the posters comments about being told "Take your bags over there, no we dont have any tape, I can't get you water." Athletes just starting helping each other ( i gave away butt'r and my wiping towel).

I will say the volunteers were trying, but understaffed. Just need more volunteers at the sight. (Or maybe take some of the $1200 dollars for next year and pay some people a few bucks)

5) Bike course - tough, but not a MFer like utah, actually quite fair. I'm a big fat guy and got my butt kicked appropriately by the course. But I didn't feel victimized like in utah, or slapped around like Placid. On par with Wisconsin for me, though a different ride.

6) Run course. I never saw a single sponge. I saw many on the ground, but not one damn sponge for me to wipe with. Not sure why they ran out of them so quick... (I hit the run course well before cut off, and the tables were there for two loops, so there's really no excuse for zero sponges for the entire run.)

That said, the run course, though another butt kicker, was safe, clean, etc. Just like the bike, I was never worried about my safety, injuries etc. (swim course too for that matter, they kept all non race related boat traffic to damn near zero. well done on that account.)

7) Medical tent - unfortunately, I got to visit there - well done!

8) Tri Bike Transport Valet Sevice. BEGIN RANT MODE. I paid several month prior to the race for bike valet. I got the bike drop off and had to wait in line again to check my bike in, were they verified our numbers. This added a ton of time to drop off, standing around etc. Really poor. Add 2 more people to the check in tent, instead of two people working their off - or come up with a more efficient system. (Ironman also took pictures for "security." Yeah right - just be honest and say it's market research / data collection to sell to bike manufacturers. We can handle the truth. Nobody matched my bike picture with the bike when I eventually got it back.)

I went at 8:45 to pick up my bike on Sunday. No bike. 10 am, no bike. 12 pm - no bike, "but we're bringing the rest now." 1:15 finally got my bike and bags, after payign another $30 bucks for parking and getting on the road 4 hours after I planned. I would have been better served picking it up myself.

The reason? "we didnt get our 30 volunteers". KISS MY GRITS. We paid $50 bucks. Times 2000 people (conservatively) that's $100,000. Take $6000 of that, pay 30 people 200 bucks for the night, and get the damn bikes back to pier 92 when promised. I've used TBT 3 times, and love them. Valet service sucks. I won't be doing it again next year.

That's right, I'm in for a second time... told you I hit the medical tent.

6:30 start / 15.5 cutoff. 1200 bucks. There wont be a third time for this race for me!

Edited by rahlowjenkins 2012-08-13 2:42 PM

I crossed at ~13:39...wearing my Navy cycling Shirt

I've added the mile splits for the run in the report... for the bike the Garmin had me going a max speed of 89 MPH, that was fun, only if it was real!!!

Congrats on the IM.  If was a tough course for sure but tons of fun.  Good luck in the future.

Great report and congrats on the strong race - sounds like you handled the adversity well and had the right attitude. That's the first I heard about a fire alarm at the race hotel, but it seems fitting given all the other out-of-race challenges with this event. I hope next year happens and you get your chance to do it again.

thanks...the fire alarm was only a few specific floors, I was on the 41st floor, not sure how many other floors had the issues as I asked someone the next day how they enjoyed the fire alarm and they said "what alarm"

Thanks for your honesty...And wait? They didnt have 30 volunteers??? My friend wanted to volunteer and she kept coming back to the volunteer table at Pier 92 and they kept telling her they were all set. She wanted to sign up for next year and the only onsite registration was for volunteers. Interesting.