Hey i was just looking at the results, and it is like a time machine. You had 12 men finishers and 1 woman. I believe that is the exact number, or very close to the 1st and 2nd ever hawaii ironmans on Oahu. Only your time would have destroyed that field back then, but of course they were riding Schwinn Varsities, swimming in speedos, and running in real tennis shoes (-;

Once again nice effort for all who did that race, the solo suffering must have been intense, but the reflection will be all the better for it..

So what are the odds that this last's until Hunter?

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Haha! Love it :)

Yeah I think I underestimated the difficulty in doing it solo...

So what are the odds that this last's until Hunter?//

I believe that they are pretty well funded for the 1st year, they just need to get the priority on where to spend that money in line with their core mission, putting on great races. All the other fluff that cost $1;000's of dollars is just wasted if you do not get the basics first. So i give them good odds in making the changes and forging ahead. The next event will be key of course, they won't get as much slack if they screw that one up..

any word on what the awards were like?

Thanks for sharing!
Sounds like a lot of the crappy stuff could be fixed after they get some EXP. Hopefully the races will get better and better.

The awards were about 1" thick plexi plaques, maybe 4"x6". And considering they went 3 deep for every single age, they got through it fairly quickly. I don't get a lot of hardware so it was worth sticking around for. Hey, my first 1st place finish in the half distance.

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Craig

Excellent.

Monty

Thanks for the great race recap, and congrats on a strong finish. This was only my fourth overall Tri, and only my third at the Olympic distance. I will say, that I was a little unnerved by the panicked sprint participant who clearly was not getting the help that she needed. It seemed to me that the kayak lifeguard was waiting for someone else to provide assistance. For an inexperienced open water swimmer, this was not the kind of scene that gave any sense of confidence.

I am thoroughly disappointed, as it appears that my timing chip did not work correctly and they have posted no time for me on the results page. I have emailed them twice, but have received no explanation. After paying $150, and traveling from San Luis Obispo to participate, i would at the least expect an emailed response letting me know that they are looking into it.

I did enjoy the race overall. The swim was cold, but nothing worse that Wildflower in early spring. I can appreciate that this was the first event, and I certainly hope they take note of some of the errors made and correct them in their coming events.

congrats dude. hardware is always nice!

from the sound of it, it seems like the directors have an ego to let go of. how can someone start something like this without the help and direction of hundreds of others who have directed races like this 1000s of times. i was really thinking about doing one of the races this year, but i will hold off for a few years till they get organized

Might want to do one sooner, if they don't get their #$*^ together by race #3 it's over.

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Dave Stark
dreamcatcher@astound.net
USAC & USAT level 2 certified coach

You're falling for the misinformed Slowtwitch beat-down. I was there last weekend racing. Overall, the long-distance racing was fine and these people have a boatload of money. They were extremely friendly and open to my and others' feedback on how to improve the race series. My experienced bet is they aren't going anywhere but up from here in triathlon visibility.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

You're falling for the misinformed Slowtwitch beat-down.//

Hey Sally, not sure what you mean by misinformed. I started this thread to voice my experience, and for others to post up their "direct experience" from their races. I did my best to not make it personal, as most who raced did. Others that did not race, this is of course a different story, but we did not get too much off topic i believe. Glad you had fun out there, as did i in my race. But to say nothing went wrong on your day is just not true. Go read the reports again of all that did those races, and there is much constructive advice for these guys. It was just really a blessing that there were not a 1000 people racing on sunday.

Anyway time to move on and let them get to the next event, hopefully fully loaded to put on a safe event.

This is more of what I had in mind. I do not believe that the series is going to be gone in 3 races. They definitely should be taking more advice on better race experiences for participants from experieced veterans like you, Monty.

I walked up to Tom Struzzri's right-hand man who asked me how HITS capuld make things better; I told him 4 things which he wrote down. My client is going to the Naples, FL race in January and I will be interested to see the metamorphosis of the series, particularly with regard to more lifegaurds. He will be racing the Oly on Saturday.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

Sally wrote "these people have a boatload of money" and that do what?

Ironman has a lot of Money to, may i remind you how many screw up they had in the past 18 month, Miami, New Orleans, cancel 5150 with 700 people,

money doesn't help, if you are not working with your head, Getting advice from Monty doesn't help,(no offence Monty) unless Monty was or his a race director, the organization of a event has nothing to do with been a athlete.

I think someone posted earlier that they have the funding in place to run this year. My interpretation of the bolded statement is that if HITS doesn't make/fails to make changes then participation will wane heavily. I don't think they will ever have no entries, as the whole triathlon community isn't on ST, but word travels fast. Personally, I would love to see another national race series like USTS. Plus, they've planned to stop in Ft Collins, which is "local" for me.

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Triple Threat Triathlon

Just a quick note. HITS and Innovative Timing are absolutely fantastic folks. They responded to my concerns over not having a time posted with a team effort to work out the problems. They provided continual email correspondence as to what they were doing, and pulled out all of the stops to figure out the problem and correct it.

They could have easily blown me off as the bottom dwelling age grouper that I am, and gave it a half hearted effort, but they did not. I am very appreciative that they took my request very seriously and applied all of their resources to getting this resolved.

I hope they work out the kinks and maintain a successful race series. I for one will be back at this event next year.

That's good to hear. I said that the timing company did a great job getting real time results up very quickly after the race, only problem, there was no run split in their software. Later that night all of a sudden there were run splits, so guess they got the message and fixed it. Like you say, hope the rest of the team responds as well as the timing company did..

I too would love to do this race again when it comes around next year. I love these winter races, they help keep the motivation levels up during the cold months.