love to hear as well. Deciding between this or Tahoe. Extremes, I know...

Didn't race yesterday. Raced Tahoe last year. You won't find a more challenging venue. Polar opposite of yesterday.

You will obviously have a great swim to start the day. Got to transition at 4:30 and immediately jumped on the shuttle. Worth it as it only took 3 minutes to get in the water. No idea how long it took for the last person in but the line was huge. Bike course was relatively easy. Some climbing on the first part of the loop and again coming out of town but every uphill was rewarded with a down. No notable climbs. The run was challenging with the 3.5 mile section of long hills. The volunteers on the course were fantastic and there were a ton of them. I had a fantastic race and would recommend. This was number 4 for me. I put it ahead of lvl and behind Wisconsin (my favorite) and cda

Fantastic event and one I would def recommend to do. I was in the tail end of the non-wetsuit swimmers to go and I was still in the water within 8min of the starting gun.
Bike and run were challenging but the fantastic support from the volunteers and community made it much easier to get thru. The whole city pretty much devoted their weekend to giving us IM athletes (and their support crew) and amazing experience. And the layout of the course was pretty spectator friendly as far as IMs go. No complaints here...about anything.

Only second IM for me (IMFL 2013 was first). Really liked it. Was near the end of the wetsuit line, still in the water before 8 am. Swim was blazing fast (thanks TVA!). Transition tents well set up and plenty of room. Bike course was moderate and very scenic. Some jackwad scattered tacks and oil on the course, lots of flats. Otherwise, no complaints about the bike. Run course had some challenging hills but fair.

Volunteer support was terrific. Crowd support was very good. The transition areas and finish are right on the riverfront downtown, so lots of things for family/friends/sherpas to do while waiting. Multiple hotels within 1-2 blocks of transition, so lodging was piece of cake.

Only thing I *might* have liked to see differently is less current assist on the swim. The swim was basically a negligible part of the day. Otherwise, no complaints whatsoever. I would sign up for this race again in a second.

Swim was what it was. Bike was beautiful, hilly enough to be challenging but still fast. The run I found to be very difficult. It's hilly. Really hilly. Overall a nice venue.

This was a challenging yet fast course, fast due to fast current and perfect weather, mid 70s

You didn't race Chattanooga.
How do you feel compelled to answer the OP's question?

IMChoo made #6 for me. It presented its own unique challenges, for sure.
Its a great course for a strong cyclist with good handling skills and solid run fitness.

The TT swim fuzzies the racing more than I like, and the current moves you around quite a bit on the course. Other than that, the swim is cush. I spent 10' less than I expected in the water.

The bike course is tough, and provides a lot of room for riders to lose speed if they aren't confident. Going fast means being able to ride not just pedal. If you are a completer, its a nice rolling course with a few gradual climbs and a few places you have to slow down to maneuver. If you are racing, you are always in the moment, adapting to the conditions, and navigating the course. In several sections, sketchy cyclist lose time scrubbing speed when a rider will still be on the gas.
If the weather is warm, the run course will be a graveyard. Its pretty dang viscous now. The whole North half of the course is full of monsters. A smarter runner will suffer a lot less than the competition.

There is tremendous crowd support, and they really make it easy for the spectators to follow the action.
The finish starts early and there are tons of folks out there to bring in the athletes.

The venue is awesome too. Lots and lots of fun to be had in Chattanooga.
Its my favorite IM so far.

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@christopher_borden •
Spinning Spoke • Dimond Bikes • Flo Cycling • Castelli Cycling

Congrats on a great race yesterday! Good insight on the course.

Definitely a yea from me.

Only real complaint from me was the little Caesars hot n ready pizza at the end. Really??!!

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king of the road says you move too slow
KING OF THE ROAD SAYS YOU MOVE TOO SLOW

Yes and yes. And the people are really nice and welcoming to racers. It's fast and fun, and then there's the run - which is tough and fun.

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https://www.pbandjcoaching.com
https://www.thisbigroadtrip.com

Only my 2nd IM as well (IMFL was 1st), but thought it was a great experience. Swim line was really long in the morning, but I was near the front and started in 5 minutes. Swim obviously was very fast, and could be even faster in future years since it was almost wetsuit legal this year. The bike was mostly enjoyable and fast. I was riding with no one in sight for long stretches on the 2nd lap until I got passed by a couple of huge draft packs, which was annoying. Crowd support in Chickamauga on the bike especially was really cool. The run was tough in part because of the hills in miles 8-11/22-25 section but also because miles 5-8/18-22 section on the highway were fairly boring. There were large crowds of spectators during probably 2/3 of the run, and they were fantastic.

Overall, Chattanooga was a good spot, with a lot of hotels really close to the IM village. Because of the easy swim, it could be neat if the bike gets harder, which might happen if they have to change the route in order to get back to 112 miles. We lucked out with cool temperatures and all day cloud cover. A hot, sunny day would have made for a brutal run.

This was my 5th Ironman, and second this year. I have done Wisconsin 3x, Challenge Roth, and now, IM Choo. Of these, Roth is the gold standard. It was just leaps and bounds bigger and better than the other races I have done, and there are far too many reasons why to list here.

Now, on to Choo.. I really, really enjoyed this race. The town is neat, the views are excellent, the volunteers were as good as I have ever experienced in any race, if not better. They were motivated I was left not wanting for anything. The course was what I would call fair. I know there is a lot of debate on the topic, but the fast swim was mostly negated by the additional 4 miles on the bike. The newly added miles were much hillier than the originally intended route. The rest of the bike was scenic, and I would term it moderately rolling. Because I trained on the course twice prior to the race, I have first hand knowledge that on a hot, sunny day, it is not a fast course. The run, was also moderately difficult. Half flat, half hilly, though I welcomed the hills, as they were a much needed change of muscle usage. I would have preferred that some of the run course was routed through downtown Chattanooga, but then I realize that requires closing and controlling important city roads for an entire day. Ultimately, if the bike was not 116 miles, I would feel that the race would need an asterisk for the aided swim, but as it was this year, it was very fair. The finish line was top notch. The shoot was appropriately long, the setup, backdrop, and 'feel', was perfect. The crowds, were large, and active, meaning they were loud, and cheering for everyone. Mike Riley was on his A game.

Some negatives.. the bike route roads were not in great shape, especially the roads leading out of the city. Once they firm up the bike route, then need to ensure the bottle throwing bumps and 'bad' sections are repaired. They do that in Wisconsin, and other races, and they should do that in Chattanooga. The expo was a little lacking, and could have been done better. Leaving T1 to hit the bike, the sunblock appliers were all running out of sunblock, which caused delays, or in some cases, not getting any at all. If the sun was out, that would have been bad.

The race and the city need to work to make this event even better. It was a little rough around the edges, but just barely so. Still, much more can be done to make this race better. Lets just say, they have all the potential in the world.

Objective, accurate alt runner. Solid review. Hit all points.

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member CupCake Cartel

Second IM. As with any outdoor race, environment controls conditions....terrain is geographical....so every IM is different. Awesome town, awesome race, I will probably do it again someday.

Aided swim?

I would say yea! It's my second IM and I thought a great race. We were lucky with the weather for sure. The overcast day on the bike made it very enjoyable.

My only issue with the swim is that I think lining up for the start is just stupid. There was plenty of space to arrange corrals by estimated time or age group or whatever and just get everybody there by 6 line them up and and then put us into the water. The line did move very quickly. This is after all a race and in my opinion there should not be a potential time advantage for getting up early. I asked somebody near to the front what time they got there and they said 3:00 am. I got there closer to 5:30 and sitting on cold ground in the dark for an hour and a half is pretty much a drag.

I thought the bike was fast and challenging. I have never seen so many people get flat tires. Some of that was the tacks which stinks. The roads are not in great condition for the bike and you just really had to pay close attention for sure all day. Since we know the course is changing because of the distance we'll see what happens. But since the bike course is about 98% in Georgia and 98% of the tourist revenue must have been in Tennessee I don't know how that will resolve. There was some automotive traffic on the course. I was part of a group caught behind a truck for a while and I talked to one person in our hotel who was verbally harassed by a driver during the race. That would have been a drag. I didn't see the big groups that everybody is talking about but with any hilly course I think you get bunching here and there. The crowd at Chickamauga was phenomenal!

The run was really hard for me because of the hills. But I knew I was undertrained for the that going in. So it was what it was. I loved the crowd support. You have to love a town where people were basically throwing parties in their yards to support the runners (thank you Barton Ave). But I did not like running through the riverfront path which was just lonely, I hated the highway section, I wasn't crazy about the golf course in the dark and I really wished that the loop turn around was close enough to the finish to see my family before the second loop. I would not be surprised if the run course changes for next year.

Not related to the race but my family had no trouble finding fun things to do during the weekend and during the race.

Congrats to everyone who finished!

It will be interesting to see what changes are made.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

From an Ironman, but this time a spectator, point of view (my wife did the race): For the most part everything went well. Check in was pretty fast at 10am Friday. Expo was good but not great. We stayed at the Hampton Inn downtown which was very very accommodating for the athletes. LOTS of restaurants downtown that are an easy walk from our hotel but none were crowded outside of the Italian place we went to the night before the race.

There are excellent side-trips to do on Friday/Saturday if you wanted to get out and entertain your family. We went to the incline railway (huge hit for our 8 year old) and Rock City (very cool spots for kids and adults). We also did the aquarium while mom was out biking (also a huge hit with the kid). Heck there was even a dog frisbee world championship going on across the river all weekend that we watched while runners were out on the course. The whole Chattanooga area was a great location to bring the family along.

As for race day, my wife was one of the ones that went in the wetsuit wave (her friend decided to wear hers and she wanted to hang out with her at the start so she wore hers as well). She was in the water just before 8. She is a pretty terrible swimmer and the current helped her more than some.

On the bike, she didn't complain about the road conditions but did complain about some of the traffic on the roads. At one point she was stuck behind an RV sucking diesel fumes because they wouldn't pass anyone. Luckily she didn't get any tacks in the tires. Overall she said the bike was easier than she expected and her split reflected that.

On the run, she didn't have really any complaints other than it was hillier/harder than expected. She said there were few spectators on the riverwalk area but the other areas made up for it. As a spectator, I was able to see her 5 times on the run while seeing a dog show, carousel ride, coffee/pee breaks, eat some tacos, etc. It was great. We set up on the other side of Walnut St bridge and had access to all kinds of places to see the runners and all kinds of things to do. Only spectator complaint was that the road they were coming down to enter the finisher chute was basically dark. A couple of well placed mobile lights would help tremendously. I couldn't see my wife until she was practically on top of us.

Post race tent, I thought was a clusterfuck. After they finished, there was absolutely no room to move or even try to find your athlete. Just a mass of people not moving, no room to move around. No room for athletes to just take a damn seat. Finisher area was just very poorly laid out. Bike and gear check out was a breeze, but again, getting the bike/gear through the mass of people huddled around the finisher tent was very hard. There was only one back to the streets and it was through the mass of people.

On a whole, especially for a first time race, it went pretty darn well. I am sure they will see where they need to improve and make the necessary changes.

I would def do it again. Yes, the swim is fast, but my garmin showed exactly 2.4 miles, so it's not short. You get that "time back" on the bike with the additional 4 miles. I really enjoyed the bike course despite riding in solitaire the vast majority of the time. Beautiful course, not super flat, but not Lake Placid either. The run is a solid challenge, so train on some pretty steep climbs late in your run. My garmin showed 1250 climbing on the run. Great course, def go do it!

Choo was my 3rd, after finishing I thought that I wouldn't do this course again but after the drive home I signed up for 2015.

Some things I didn't Like:
- Hard to cycle around city for workouts prior to race
- Bike first mile, really rough, bottles everywhere. A women was trying to run back in the road to grab her bottle while all of t1 was coming out, just about causing a major crash.
- Swim Start, I prefer a mass start with no current aid
- Traffic on bike course, I saw a truck passing a car that was passing bikes on a 2 lane road. I got stuck behind a car that was going slower than me because they didn't want to pass cyclist.
- Riverwalk side of run is boring

Some things I Liked:
- Venue location, free shuttles around town, lots of family stuff to do, good restaraunts
- Swim with no contact, river is wide and everyone spreads out nicely
- Chickamauga on bike route, it was like being in the TDF with the streets lined with people
- Nice rolling bike, not to difficult, but not easy either.
- North Shore run section, the hills are tough but the crowds are awesome, the spectators lines most of that section.
- Only 6 hr drive from Home!

I hope for 2015 they slow the swim and make the bike 112, other than that it was a great race.