Timbikerun wrote:
Nothing large, unfortunately. The only VT triathlons I know of are the Vermont Sun series at Lake Dunmore, close to Middlebury.
At one point AG nationals was in Burlington. Would be cool to see that return but USAT seems married to Milwaukee.
I’d like to see half or even a full distance race that includes some of the epic climbs. The green mountains are the best. Tough to say if there’s sufficient infrastructure for a 2000+ person event though, outside of Burlington maybe.
I think there is almost no market for extremely difficult full distance if you need 2000 for the economics. Whistler, Tahoe did and let's see what happens to the return of the St. George full.
I think there is a market for 500-800 person difficult half IM that is a locally run event but even Savageman sadly wrapped up.
My estimate was the bike course in 1986 was in excess of 1400m vertical and more than 400m vertical on the run. It was crazy tough. My 1:33 half marathon was something I just winged on my fitness from bike touring in Europe that spring. I biked for three weeks around 2500km loaded down with camping gear and touring equipment and was in formidable shape for a 20 year old but not in any tri specific shape.
2 weeks later at the end of August I ran 7:08 on the 1.5 mile run on my military fitness test in military issued running shoes on a road loop. To out this in perspective that was 4:43 mile pace and not on a track. So my 4:54 on that half Ironman was not at all proportional to my engine and my fitness. If I knew what I know now about triathlon and pacing I suspect I could have done a mid 4:3x. My idea of pacing each hill was attacking every hill like I was Bernard Hinault trying to drop Lemond on a stage finish....rinse and repeat. Truly clueless of what I was doing.
Kenny Souza won this race on 4:16. That shows you how hard the course was.
Of course like anything that happened 35 years ago it gets more legendary the more you think about it, but that part of Vermont only has flats on the swim course
