Kemah 2013 (Page 4)

What people do not understand is the setup window. Our crew of 5 big trucks with nearly 40 people involved have to hand set the entire course. It takes 3-4 hours to do so. That means they start at 3 AM. From Saturday evening (terrible) to Sunday morning it was pouring. Sure it cleared up around 8 AM and was beautiful, even dry, the rest of the day, but that left us no time to set the course.

The police did not force us to cancel. However, TXDOT and TDPS would have easily put a halt to the event forever had I sent my 40 guys out at 3 AM to set the course (anticipating the clearing weather at 8 AM) and one of them got hit by a skidding car or slipped and fell of the truck and got hurt bad in some way in the bad weather. It's not the athletes I was worried about, it was the race crew. So if I waited until 7-8 AM for them to lay the course it would have been 10-11 AM before the race started, that's way passed the cutoff times for a delayed start.

It was still a good race, but i didn't get much sleep because I was worried of a potential cancellation/change.  I saw the change at 4am and knew to get moving earlier...although really I was moving a bit sooner than I needed to be - might have had a better race with a couple more hours sleep.

Really the Mens race only moved up by 30 minutes.  Transition closed at 6:30 instead of 7.  But I know there were some accidents on the way down to Kemah so I wouldn't be surprised if people missed the start.

As for race suggestions:

If you want an Oly, and not too far away by time or distance from Houston the best thing would be Capital of Texas in Austin May 27th.  

If that is too far away then Clear Lake August 24th is the next one.

Looking at the Races link here there are actually 2 Oly's next weekend in Texas, but you have to be willing to go North of Dallas (Texas Man in Valley View), or to Lubbock.

Edited:spelling (I k(no)w the difference between new and knew.).

Thanks for explaining this. I did not think it would take that ong to mark the course, but I have never put on a race either and basically have no clue what it takes to do so.

That makes sense, and certainly no-one would want the volunteers to get hurt either.

My only point of critique is the moving the men's up by 30 minutes it put me (as probably other that dropped of the bike the night before) in a time crunch on race morning. With the bike dorpped off I planned on getting to transition around 7:30ish and had to hurry up race morning when I saw the FB post at 4:30am. Might have been better to keep transition open till 7:00 and have the boat depart at 7:30?

Considiering the drivers out at 3am on Sunday morning you might want a police car with lights on following them even if it isn't raining.

Thanks again for what you do. 

Just go ahead and invest in 1000 KICKR's just in case the bike course is closed again so we can do that the bike in transition.

Cool, that explains the few people I saw coming runnign to the boat.

I appreciate the openess and timely and direct communication.

Also posting the change to FB AND sending it via e-mail did certainly help!

Oh and a big thumbs up to the folks at transition, they made sure no-one without a writst band got in and they diligentle checked the number on bike and wrist when I moved my bike out (in the hectic of the morning).

On another note / suggestion:

I wasn't particularly fond of the location for the post race this year.  I think the fact that it was pretty far away from transition and not close to parking/hotels made it harder for families to come around. 

Some of that was the weather, but it seemed like the Team tents were less populated than at other races.

I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but other than the swim exit it would be hard for people in Kemah to tell that there was an event taking place at all.  I realize that downtown mibht be hard to pull off, although some other event had a tent set up in that area so maybe not.

Perhaps if the run could end at the start of the boardwalk it could maximize exposure while minimizing disruption.

This isn't meant to be critical, just something to consider.