Hueston Woods

Well, the hills have not gotten any less on the bike course at Hueston Woods. Kind of forgot from last year when I did the sprint. Tough but had a great time and the weather was good. Missed my time goal by a little bit that's OK. Need to work on hills for next year!

Yes, that bike course was pretty brutal. I'm guessing the bike splits won't be particularly fast. It seemed like there was about 3 or so rolling hills out AND back that no matter how fast I descended, I'd only get half way up the other side. These were like 20% grades, out of the saddle, hammering the lowest gear on the bike for me, and it took several miles to recover from the very first one right out of transition. On a brighter note, the run was comparably pleasant.


Edited by slowspoke 2013-08-11 9:02 PM

Results are in. Turns out it's not just the bike splits that were slow. The fastest run was just below 23 minutes. Even the swims seemed slow. Compared to another sprint of similar size (and presumably competition) this is a very difficult course. The overall winning time was 17 minutes behind another area sprint of equal distances.

Yea, if you are looking for a fast bike split, this is prolly not your race. It is a good test, so I will most likely do it again next year.

Edit to add: Just checked the results and also compared them to last year. Looks like the swim times were a lot longer also. Talked to some guys the before the race who said they thought the swim course was short last year. The must have fixed that this year. I was happy with my swim, although my swim time was a longer than I would have expected. Maybe it was a little too long this year!

Edited by buck1400 2013-08-12 4:04 PM

The swim definitely seemed long to me. If I performed in training the time that was reflected in the race I would think I wasn't working hard enough lol. The whole course seemed pretty brutal, but it felt really good to get done. That downhill sprint to the finish was pretty awesome

It looks like they updated the swim times today. Mine is 10 minutes less than what they had posted yesterday. Much more within the normal range!

The run seemed mighty long. It took me forever to get to the first mile marker!

For next year my hope is that they are able to get a better turn around for the sprint- i saw some near crashes as the OLY riders went straight and the sprint riders swung wide to turn around.

I am so glad that I brought my roadie- no way I would of been able to ride on the TT rig on those hills.