Bump....

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Do you like hills? Relentless hills?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I think you may have to wait a while. I am sure they are picking dates that work well with deerhurst for both races, and doesn't conflict with either Tremblant race, placid, and IMC. I imagine it will be similar timing though, and it likely won't sell out so you'll have plenty of time. The contract was for 3 yrs and although it wasn't particularly well attended, everyone I've talked to had nothing but great things to say about the organization/volunteers etc. so hopefully the numbers improve going forward. I think it's the most honest race I've participated in, the rolling start and early hills broke everything up nicely and the tough but very fair course really rewards patience and execution. If you have good watts/kg and can keep your ego in check this course is tailor made for you. If you like to whip it out and measure on every one of the bazillion hills then coast and draft like a maniac on the downhills and flats to try and survive like a group of 4 or 5 guys that kept me equally frustrated and entertained for 100 km than it will be a very long day!

I like how you describe our area and course. It is a fair and honest course. Like Dev often says, there are no free pulls to T2 on this course. Our community is still riding a high from the event and our Itonamn Muskoka Experience Committee is already brainstorming and planning on making it even better next year ha already started. One of the comments that we keep hearing about our event is how it took into consideration the athletes, the spectators and family members, volunteers, and community residents and how each one of these groups were engaged and involved in the event to ensure that each and everyone of them had a truly Muskoka experience. One that isn't full of hype but just chilling back, relaxing, And enjoying your friends and family in probably one of the most beautiful places in the world. That's what Muskoka is all about. And then you throw a great race in the middle of that, it doesn't get any better than that. It's like Disneyland for triathletes

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Jon Morton
President, Triathlon Muskoka (TriMuskoka)
http://www.trimuskoka.com

If you want to make it better, ask Deerhurst to make the stay a five night minimum with a rate not more than $300. The only turn off of the whole event was how much it cost to stay at the host hotel for an event two hours from Toronto. Aside from that one quibble the event was incredible with a great course and great crowd support.

Ken

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"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

5 night minimum!?!? Most places at IMMT are a three night minimum - I think that's more reasonable.

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
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I would prefer to have no minimum, but at some point Deerhurst has to make some money. This year was 4 night minimum and $450 a night...

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"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

I got 3 nights at Hidden Valley right next door for my parents at 200$ about a week before the event, very reasonable and only 1 mile from race start. Host hotels are always going to be expensive (King Kam is looking at 450$ U.S. right now)

Maurice

For sure. I will stay off site next time, but with an 8 month old I wanted to be closer for nap times. I am not anti making money at all, but an extra night at a lower rate increases my use of a fun facility and Deerhurst get extra restaurant usage etc. Should be a win win.

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"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

Congratulations on such a successful inaugural event. Even though the original pitch is a 2,000 person race - to which I think this will grow - I LOVED the scale and field size. I've experienced the range of IM, from ~30 to 3000 starters, and it seemed like the ~1,300 field that you ran is right in the sweet spot. On one hand, you get critical mass to have all the accoutrements of a big race - energy from cheering crowds, big and frequent aid stations, lots of company on the run, a well-kept physical course - but on the other, you avoid a lot of the downfalls of the too-large pageant event, ranging from overwhelming crowds to outright danger to racers on the course.

Moreover, I got the sense that the front end of the field kinda punched above its weight class in terms of competition (and I'm not just saying that because i took a shi$kicking from from front end). I want to crunch, slice and dice the numbers once there's more time in the outseason, but I got the sense that it was a more competitive AG field than other IMs. I admit that when I signed on, I was attracted by the possibility of a slightly less competitive field as a function of size: like others, I was kinda hoping a lot of fast-dude entries had been bled off to LP, MT, and Canada, but this didn't seem to be the case. If 'number of AWA registrants' is a bellwether of a competitive field, I think there were more Gold in my AG in Muskogee than there were in a much larger field in Whistler.

To the OP: I thought the original IM/Town of Muskoka agreement is the race would fall on the weekend before labour day. I'm not sure why this isn't confirmed for 2016, though there's probably a good reason.

I heard some rumours that they may switch the date of Muskoka 70.3 and Muskoka 140.6. It would make sense to me as MT 140.6 was a couple weeks before Muskoka 140.6 and MT 70.3 was only 2 weeks before Muskoka 70.3. They must draw from similar population centres so I think switching the dates of the 70.3 with the 140.6 would allow some people who don't do fulls to do both 70.3s or some do both 140.6s.

I think I might really like that if they did it. Sure would be nice to hear though, since I'm starting to think about next year's wishlist of races.

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Munq

I'm curious also to if this is possible. I'm not sure if that's what they're waiting for to announce a date, but if I'm from the Northeast (Ontario, Quebec, New England, etc.) and want to race a 70.3 in the fall, there isn't anything Ironman branded in that time slot. Challenge Cedar Point suddenly shows up on my radar....

Even before this year's race I talked to the organizers and asked about the dates and they said the dates were still being firmed up with Ironman HQ folks. I said, "if your dates have some flex, please consider flipping the 140.6 to early summer and 70.3 to late so that way it is clear of Tremblant/IMCDA/Chattanooga etc and you can get more people signing up. Plenty of people in the North East would love an early summer IM and not train through crazy eastern seaboard humidity and have the rest of the summer for family.

That was my 2 cents worth as a consumer. There was no yes/no/maybe, simply, "date is being discussed with the folks at IM". I THINK flipping the dates would be a positive move BUT the downside is that early July for the full 140.6 you can easily have tougher weather than Kona. So it's a roll of the dice. This year for the 70.3 we generally had good weather, but a lot of folks found the run "hot" (I personally did not, but it take a lot for me to feel overheated, but easy for me to get really cold).

We stayed in the condos next to the host hotel and it was surpisingly reasonable. Great event.

I wouldn't put the full before the half if I were IM Muskoka. I used the half as a test event to see if I could handle the full and so did quite a few others. It would also take the teeth out of their "tough toonie" event which was a good idea for people who like more medals etc.

Ken

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"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

My guess is that they are waiting for Deerhurst to get there act together and figure out there end of it. Just a guess based on not being able to book anything currently in August at the resort or weekends in July.

I really hope they work on getting a weekend that doesn't compete with other major races...because there was a very thin field for this year's inaugural race. I did it once, finished, won't do it again due to the hills, however I really want to see this one succeed and stick out as a TOUGH AS HELL race.

I disagree that the field was very thin. The number of participants was not huge but the field was very competitive. I think this is because 50 slots were offered for 2016 Kona. Getting a slot means that one can focus on Kona rather than chasing a Kona slot during next year's race season.

I guess I should try again...every day leading up to the event, I heard people were dropping out. I was not a competitor rather was more of the traditional finisher. There could have been many more participants had there not been other big time races going on/the website was a bit more honest about how tough the course was. I was lucky to have done the HIM last year and spend some time training in the area since I had signed up for the full before doing the half. As for how competitive the event was, you are absolutely correct most of those who participated killed it!

Muskoka has always been a funny race that way. There is a lot of amateur endurance talent within a pretty small radius - Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto have a ton of fast folks, not to mention the people coming up from the states. Ontario has a pretty big local racing scene with tons of races so you can go a few seasons without seeing some of the fastest age groupers and then all of a sudden a race comes along with enough of a carrot to draw them all out. I saw this with the 70.3 in 2013 when it had 100 world championship slots for Tremblant - the first time it was within driving distance. Prior years the Vegas slots rolled into the 5:10+ times in the competitive men's age groups, that year despite twice as many slots available the M35-39 last qualifier was 4:55 IIRC. A lot of people thought it would be an easy qualifier based on previous years and the extra slots and ended up heading home empty handed. I think that happened again this year at the full due to it being the first qualifying race for 2016. On paper it appeared to be an easier qualifier with 50 spots divided among 1200 vs. 2500 - but tell any M30-34 guy slower than 9:30 that it was an easy race to KQ! I swim with a woman who podiumed at Kona last year that was unable to KQ this year at Muskoka.

I think the field might get bigger, and I hope it does, as word gets out that it's not as ridiculously hard as people originally made it out to be. If Florida or Arizona are your only yardsticks you might get a bit of a shock, but people who have raced CdA, IMC, IMSG, IMLP, IMLT won't have too much trouble.

yep ... one way to gauge the thinness / thickness of any given field might be to set out the AWA starters to OA field ratio (or, AWAO Gold, or gold+silver) ... although AWA isn't an absolute measure, it's probably a pretty good estimate to compare race to race.

I wish you could easily see the # of races beside AWA status. The gold guy with 4-5 races doesn't concern me nearly as much as the bronze guy with 1.

wait ... it's the average of the best two or three races, isn't it?