I'm registered and wondering the same thing. This is my first time so I can't comment on the course from experience, but this is the first year they've had the Oly and I believe the causeway section was added to make the distance work. I'm doing the sprint and I'm also curious about this:

"As you exit the Transition Area, you should be aware that you will most likely be merging with athletes who have already completed loops of the course. They will be going straight on Day Blvd at a higher speed than you. Be sure to keep to the right and look back for oncoming bike traffic (just like you are merging on a highway in a car!)."




Hopefully it works out OK.

The sprint athletes will be entering as the olympic athletes are already on the bike course, so hopefully that section you mentioned stays safe. I mapped out from their description what the on/off the causeway will look like, which is the two S-bends they mention. Looks like it will be no passing during this section, so bad luck if you get stuck behind someone who corners slow.

It will also be interesting to see how they handle potential pedestrians on the causeway. I've run in that area quite a bit on weekend mornings and the whole Castle Island/causeway/Carson Beach area is usually pretty busy, even early in the AM. Might be a challenge to keep pedestrians off the bike course. I know they're at the mercy of the city as far as route planning but I wish the bike course stayed entirely on Day Blvd.

Hey everyone,

This is a COMPLETELY closed course, including the causeway. MA State Police will be shutting down the roads to cars starting at 5am and they are closing the Causeway to pedestrians at 5am. This real estate has been permitted exclusively for the Boston Triathlon.

Pretty hard to do that in a city, but it will make much nicer and safer. Just racers.

Did it a couple years ago before they added Olympic distance. Was crazy then. Putting that many more athletes on that course will make it that more dangerous. Problem is so many different levels of riders on a closed course. I would ride somewhat defensively. I was offered free entry but declined due to the nature of bike course.

And they're calling for lots of rain from 2am until the afternoon so that's going to make it even more of a challenge with everyone out there. Not looking forward to THAT

I actually found the race to be really well organized. The bike course was congested but it never felt unsafe, and IMO the lap format actually added an element of excitement that you don't find in most local races. I did see one guy after the race who appeared to have gone down pretty hard but I'm not sure that could've been avoided given the weather conditions.

My only criticism is there was a lot of passing in the no passing zones on the bike course. Seems like that should be pretty easy to police.

I will definitely do it again.

I agree !! Definitely better than I thought it would be and wasn't too bad. The only downside as you noted was a lot of passing the no passing and also right after that along the narrow turnaround....THAT got hairy for sure as you had people passing going both ways, so at times it was 4 wide in a narrow place. Other than that, not TOO much trouble and I will definitely be doing it again next year. It's unavoidable but there were many times someone MUCH faster went flying by someone in a tight spot. But all in all a good race. My only complaint is the no number on the racking which made for chaos as people just out their bikes anywhere along the rack, so you had 3 bikes all facing the same way with no space for the opposite (even or odd number) to put their bike.

Agreed on the racking, a little better organization would help!