mickison wrote:
who is going to come on here and give us first times the "real deal" on the im chattanooga course. swim of course should be smooth sailing as all with current. sounds like the bike is mostly rollers with a steep section at hog jowl rd, is that correct? anything else to concern myself with on the bike? on the run sounds like barton ave is the killer. pacing myself on the run with those hills will be challenging.
Not much to say about that swim. Sighting was easy and I had minimal contact.
On the first and last 5-6 miles of the bike, just watch out for road issues - potholes, cracks, lots of manhole covers, a couple of R/R crossings, etc. Most are well marked, but be wary. Outside of that, the bike is mostly rollers, hardly anything I'd call a real climb. Pretty nice roads once you get out of town (at least for a north Texan). I like the bike course. Looks like winds will be negligible. Not sure if you plan on using SN on the bike, but it was the fastest and most efficient of all my IMs. They had my bag before I came to a complete stop.
The run is tough. The course profile will show you the hills. There's a good one almost immediately out of transition that you do only once (you run down it just before finishing). It's then flattish for a while, with a steep punchy climb before crossing north over the river. The hills on the north side of the river are no joke, there's virtually nothing flat over there. You're going up or going down. There's some shade when running along the river, and perhaps a bit on the north side. I guess that all depends when you're running though.
Overall, it's a great city and great venue for an IM.
