huskertko wrote:
For a first time event, it was very well organized, I thought. There are a couple logistically things, the swim is in a location that without a mile or so walk, is inaccessible to spectators, which is kinda bad. The swim was in a slough of the river, and was really low on Saturday, and water temp was 72, but by Sunday the level was up a little, there were people still walking the swim on the backside of the loop, but the temp had dropped from 72 to 58, quite a shock.
Like I said the bike couse is FLAT, but the roads were nice, the turns were very well marked by paint and volunteer. While most of the roads weren't closed, the general public was pretty accomodating to the race, with a couple of exceptions.
The run from what my wife said was again dead flat along the levee, with a few hills up and down off the levee. Her biggest complaints were, a couple aid stations ran out of water, and the other was that it wa a very "lonely" run. Being on the levee, there were virtually no spectators so aside from other runners, not much encouragements.
The finish area was nice in the fact it was in a park with an ampitheater, I think that having a large centralized tent for spectators/athlete would have been nice. There were a lot of clubs and teams that had tents up as well. They would be well served to get another timing mat further down the finishing chute so they had a better idea of who was finishing, they tried to announce names from bib numbers but not the greatest success.
Post race food was good, BBQ, but being from KC it's hard to top hometown BBQ.
Overall, I thought it was a good race, and the public support was great. Work out a few kinks and this could be a really nice race. We plan on going back next year.
The real X factor will be the weather, the first week in October is iffy in this region. Saturday it windy, gusting to 30mph from the north, wind chill felt like the 30s, but Sunday was awesome. 50s at the start, 60s finishing, with very little wind.
I did this event too, and this review is pretty dead on. I personally thought it was great, and it seemed the RD was really trying to focus on the athletes and pay attention to detail. What I take from this is that I am pretty confident that some of the "issues" that occurred will be specifically addressed. I've been to many events where the RD doesn't seem to care too much and seems to cut corners. Not so with RMP (and I had no experience with them before). My other 70.3 experience is with PEM in NOLA and this race was easily as well run at NOLA, probably better. (That's not saying NOLA was bad in any way....just trying to relay the quality of the event).