Hello man,

As a Brazilian linving in a town near Rio, I did it as my main race this season.

The swiming part is in the Macumba beach, that usually have temps in the low 20ºC and is calm in the spot that the race takes place. The start this year was in waves divided by age groups.

In the bike 60km of the race is doing 3 laps in the Av. Lucio Costa, which is next to the beach so the wind can be a factor (this year it really picked up in the last part of the bike), but the road conditions ar great as it was part of the olympic road bike course. The remaining 30km has 2 10-15min of climbing and some fast descending and also some small roads that have some bumps (speed reducers).

The run course in pancake flat, 3 loops of 7km alongside the beach. You just have to be prepared for the sun and heat (this year the temps at the start of the run were a bit higher than 30ºC).

The race takes place in Recreio, which is near Barra da Tijuca and have a lot of options of hotels. There ir a travel agency that offer services for ironman brand races here in Brazil that is OPALATUR and they do a wonderful job with the logistics.

Sorry for any English mistakes that I may have made.

All the best and feel free to ask any other questions!

+1. My girlfriend did it last year and is doing it this year (she's from Niteroi) and loved it. Beautiful swim, bike isn't too hard and the run is flat. The timing of the year means it isn't full blown summer but daily temps can vary. Prob going to be 75-85F but prob a 20% chance it hits 90-95F. Humidity isn't that bad though (e.g. compared to Eagleman 70.3).

@Jonny89, o teu ingles e muito bom, sem error nenhum!

Great race. I raced it this year and will race it again next year.
Highly recommend it.

I did a college study abroad in Rio in 2011. My friends and I partied and went out all the time and I never felt unsafe. Grant it, this was when oil was $100 and we stuck to the mainstream spots, but it seems Rio has gotten a lot of flack the last several years as being unsafe for westerners, especially with the Olympics. Is this still the case or are the dangers of Rio exaggerated?

It's the same it's always been.

If you go walk around the beach wearing your flashy Rolex and with a camera around your neck, yeah, you have a considerable risk of getting mugged.

That said, I wouldn't (and never did) consider the "unsafeness" as a dealbreaker for not doing the race. If you are minimally smart about it, your risks of any unpleasant surprises are greatly reduced.

I married a carioca from Rio and I've been down 20+ times over the past 25 years. It is a wonderful city and I've never felt unsafe - even when I've perhaps overindulged at a carnival party and not been at my sharpest. My ( gorgeous!) teenage nieces zip around at all hours in Ubers very safely. As others have said - be smart as you would in any big city and you won't have any trouble.

Barra ( "baha") Tijuca is one of the newer areas of the city and is my wife's favorite beach. Many of the western hi-tech companies like IBM, Cisco and Oracle have built their campus sites in the neighborhood and it is full of very nice condos and malls. It used to be a bit isolated from the rest of Rio, but since the Olympics there is a train station ( during the games it was just connected and had a bus extension out to the malls and Olympic Village ) . Especially after the Olympics - signage and language skills make it easy for non-Portuguese speakers to get around, order meals or find the good training loops.

I've never managed to enter a race down there - but there is a large sporting community down there and I would expect it to be run very well.

---

" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978