Another vote for the Auburn Triathlon here. I raced it two years ago. Beautiful course with hills. The swim is in Folsom Lake and the run is single track on some of the Western States trails. Excellent food and beer after from local brewery. Denver to Sacramento is an easy flight and Auburn is probably a 40 minute drive east on I-80. There are a lot of brewery's and wineries to enjoy in the Sierra Foothills.

Clean Sierra water, good roads with great scenery and an excellent run course that may stop you in your tracks to take in the views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SpcvgMidx4

Lots of great suggestions here, thanks everyone.

To those peeps who suggested the Auburn Tri--I like it, but I am supposed to do a sub 7 hour HIM to validate my entry into the other race. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, but looking at last year's results, only 38 of the 92 finishers were sub-7. Good Lord, how hard is this race?! Sounds like they have taken 2K+ of the climbing on the bike course out, so that will make things faster but geez. What do you think one would add to their standard HIM time to guesstimate a finish time at Auburn?

Yep, auburn in the past added time. But with the new easier bike course, we have no basis as to what the bike times will be like now. I know the old half bike course, which I have ridden a number of times, was a killer, like 5K of climbing. But the new course, which was changed on purpose to make it easier, will give much faster race times.

So if want an easy course, Auburn is not it. If you want a great course, as many who have done have stated, you will have a lot of fun. And Ryan at USAP productions is making lots of great changes to make it even better.

Now, maybe someone can comment on the new bike course, since many have probably ridden it, or parts of it. I believe I have and it clearly is much faster than the old course!!

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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There is one in Lawrence, KS, that I have heard good things about (I think it is Free State). Lawrence is a fun little town.

Looking back at my 70.3 race times for 2015 and 2016, it looks like I my overall finish times were 30 minutes slower in Auburn than they were at Austin and Oceanside. I was about 10 minutes slower in Auburn than I was for Donner Lake. If you don't mind driving 2 hours east from the Sacramento Airport (or an hour West from the Reno Airport), then I'd recommend the Donner Lake Triathlon particularly if you have family or friends in tow because they just hang out at the beach all day listening to live music while you race. The bike has a lot of climbing but the run is relatively flat and spectacular.

https://www.youtube.com/...R3G7Z-c#action=share