Motor City Tri

I did the Sprint, and the weather conditions were great...made me wish I'd signed up for the Olympic.

The water wasn't nearly as cold as last year (67 or 68 this year, I think it was in the 50s last year), the heat didn't really hit until after the race (compared to the day before, when it was 93 degrees...that's Michigan for you, lol). There was a little bit of chop on the water, and I heard about 100 people switched from the Oly to the Sprint at the starting line...not sure if this was accurate or not, but quite a few did.

The only issues were the overlap with the Gran Prix teardown, that altered the course and left a LOT of debris on the bike course...quite a few flat tires (had a friend that got two flats and had to DNF). The wind wasn't as helpful as it's been in previous years, it was blowing from the North, so no huge boost on the Canadian side, and it did make a difference on times, at least for me. The run was through the wooded part, which was nice, but the asphalt was a little uneven and broken up in parts, I was worried about twisting an ankle, but managed to survive. I think the run wound up being a bit over 5k (3.3-3.4 miles was what I got and what others told me), so it was hard to compare times with last year.

On the plus side, besides the weather, the current in the river was ripping on the back half of the swim, so everyone got a nice boost and some good times were posted. And I won one of the Rudy Project gift certificates in the raffle afterward, so I went away very happy!

I did the olympic, after doing the sprint last year (the sprint was my first race ever).

I didn't necessarily appreciate the RD coming over the loud speaker at the beach trying to convince olumpic competitors to do a shorter race. I understand what he was getting after, but after getting in/out of the water it really was not that choppy at all. Maybe I'm a stronger swimmer than I think/expect, but all it did was make me that much more nervous about the longest single swim of my life.

Having the back half of the course was nice, but as stated before, there was a ton of loose gravel, nuts, some sort of tie downs, etc, everywhere and trucks on course. I came around one the turn by the (GP) start finish straight and there was a fork truck grabbing one of the boxes and moving it across the whole course. I was far enough back where it didn't affect me but there were a few people that had to navigate through there. There was a lot of (other bike) traffic on course, but that's to be expected when you have north of 700 athletes.

The run course was overall pretty good until I got into the woods. As a slower runner I felt at times I was holding people up behind me since there was not much room to move over. I also managed to turn my ankle a bit over the bridge by the water station. The nice volunteers were reminding everyone to watch their step but there is only so much to be done.


Overall a good race, a good first oly for me, but I've experienced better races from the 3D Crew. I know there were some things that they had to work around that would make things difficult, and I don't fault them too much for it. I'm really excited to get out and run the motor city championships later this year.