It doesn't sellout.

IMO, the race kind of sucks for a variety of reasons. By far the worst road conditions I have ever ridden on during a race.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

I agree about the race's road conditions. I was taken out on the bike course last year by someone swerving to miss a huge gash in the road. Will not be going back to do that race.

Well, that takes Austin out of the potential line up for an end season race. I am fine riding on rough chip seal roads, but from last year's head and neck injuries going over cracks and potholes can mean headaches for the entire day....I'm fine with high frequency low amplitude pertubation (ex: St. Croix), but not low frequency high amplitude. It kind of sucks having to pick riding routes and events based on pavement quality, but at the same time, its a long way better from looking at all your bikes and thinking about putting them on ebay wondering if you can ride.....I like the city of Austin and thought this might be a good jaunt in October, but based on what you are saying (and your inputs have always been bang on wrt to details on races), I will pass till things improve.

Dev

There's this race which is fairly close to Austin: http://kerrvilletri.com/

I raced the sprint distance last year and know a few who did the half and thought it was a good race, the bike course was in good shape and a fairly nice ride.

IMO the race is an embarrassment to the city of Austin, a great tri/cycling/fitness place. The roads are terrible, you don't see the hill country, and the swim is in a power plant lake. They really need to move it out west with the swim in one of the highland lakes and the bike in the hill country. Perhaps if the popularity dips enough they will.

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Oh yeah!

I'm not sure it rises to the level on an embarrassment to the City. It's Travis County that controls the maintenance of most of those roads.

highland lake, hill country. whatever distance you want.
http://hitstriathlonseries.com/marble-falls-tx/

hill country, river swim, sprint and half, but farther from Austin. Closer to San Antonio
http://www.kerrvilletri.com/

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Hilly Flats Racing

I kind of agree with duffman, with such a cycling/triathlon culture here, we ought to have a great 70.3 or iron distance race here, and we don't.

We have LOTS of great olympic and sprint events in the area, but Austin has become too crowded to really close down a bunch of roads I guess.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Hey, if prodding from ST can get Lance to St. Croix and HyVee, maybe prodding from ST can get WTC to consider "another Austin course". You guys live in the community and are the best consultants. Talk to Keith Jordan about it!!!! Maybe something new and improved in 2013?

Where was the old Texas Hill Country Triathlon Half IM (used to be a Kona qualifier). I had heard lots of good things about that.

....and heck, you guys have Lance as part of your local tri community. If anyone can get things shut down in Texas, you have the man who can. He knows what it is like with the centre of France shuts down for endurance sport.....you just need him to beat up on some people to help shut things down for half a day!

I did the Marble Falls tri this year and was great. A hard hilly course, but a well organized and scenic race.

The problem is the pretty parts of Austin to bike in are full of rich people that would throw a fit if you tried to close their roads, I believe. Hell they throw fits and call the police already when big informal group rides pass through!


It is just a logistics problem, I don't think WTC can do much about it.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Well I guess I'll head out to Soma then....really doesn't seem fun to race there. Bummer.

Maybe you guys can get Lance to buy some land and build a 10K bike loop with a 5K run loop inside that and a 1K out and back swim basin inside that....kind of like what we have in Montreal at the Formula1 track/Olympic rowing basin....but it is only 4K and can only accomodate ~200 athletes at a time.

We actually have a similar problem in Ottawa. It is a great place to train, but closing roads is a nightmare for an event as we have 2 city governments, 2 provincial governments and 1 federal government body owning the various roadways, lakes and recreational facilities and the nicest lake is a fair distance from downtown hotels....good if you want to put on a 300-400 person tri for local, not great if you want to put on a 2000 person international calibre event.

The easiest way to put on an event here is when it only involved dealing with one government body and even then, it is quite difficult. Best for "local calibre events". The biggest endurance event happens this weekend with the Ottawa marathon, where they deal with all 5 govt agencies, but it also brings 100,000 or so total "heads" into the city for the weekend, so everyone likes the tourist dollars.

True.
I had many a talk with KJ before the Austin 70.3 got going. Supposing there was water in Lake Travis to swim in, you have to think about: Where to swim; where for 2000 people to park (and we know that the shuttle thing is a pain); where to head out from the water---and do you really think that there could be a safe bike course out 620 or 71? Would need a full lane for sure. Then what roads to close for bike to come back and then where do ya run? Permitting would be a nightmare. Not to mention the city fees for permits have skyrocketed. I remember in the good ol' days when Raul from RunFar could put on a race anywhere...drop the cones, etc. Now the city engineers have to be involved, the city has to contract the cone placement, etc. It's just not as easy as people would think.

Dev, agree with you about GMAN's race assessment. He and I share a lot of views. If you do want to come to our lovely central TX area, Kerrville is the place to go. Nice riding. Plenty of chipseal there, too, but I think the race course is not as bad as some of the other country roads. And not so much of the splitting and potholes like east of Austin (thanks to the droughts of 2009 and 2011--we were pretty ravaged).

This. I'm 3 hours from the race and I would never do it again. Local races beat it. Sad.

Some of the dynamics you mention for puttingon a race in Austin are very similar for here in Ottawa. We have an awesome multisport community (no Lance or Pros, but great place to live and train), and it is easy to put on small sprints and local level tris or club activities. But the moment it gets bigger, things get very difficult to pull off. Oh yeah, we have 5 months of snow, but then our endurance events just go on snow. As an example the largest local XC ski club got started mainly because the originators got tired of dealing with governments. They bought their own land (some donated by families, some bought) and create their own infrastructure, trail network, and everything. They are now the top high performance club in Canada for a few years in a row. Basically the community was there but the government was in the way, so the community extracted itself from the government. That's easier to do when you are just trying to create 30K or so of XC ski trails (they double as a summer Mountain bike/trail running centre)....not really possible with triathlon where by definition we're on public roadways.

When the discussion came about wrt to an Mdot Ironman in Eastern Canada, I felt that Tremblant was the right place. They have a nice lake, awesome roads, and a downhill ski resort that has a ton of hotel capacity. Much easier to put on an Mdot race there than any bigger Canadian City. Tremblant is just set up perfectly for this.

Well, glad I read this as my to do list for the weekend consisted of booking my trip to Austin from Chicago for this end of the season race.

Let me ask everyone this as a comparison tool, for those of you saying that the roads are awful, have any of you done the 70.3 in Racine, WI? The roads there were pretty chewed up and if anyone has done both let me know the comparison. If its worse than Racine, looks like I'm heading to Miami....

Thanks!

The same in Montreal could be interesting...I mean the roads in Montreal always look great ;-)

The roads are really bad with open cracks where the seal filler was stretched. They are everywhere and you won't know you hit one until it is way too late.

More importantly, the feel of the race is even worse. Low budget feel. This is not Austin. It's the hood known as Decker. You swim through hydrilla the whole swim due to the warm power plant water. The finish in the cattle arena is a downer and there is no post race feel at all. Not worth the travel unless you live in Texas.

I've done New Orleans, Miami, Galveston. All were way more fun and better organized.

If Miami is on your list, do it. I did it in 2011 and loved the race even though the am rain made the roads wet. Stay at the host hotel, enjoy the totally outdoor expo, and get ready for a fun race. Fast bike. Tougher run that you would guess with the overwater bridge you have to cross 4 times. The swim is in the harbor and is not wetsuit legal. Small chop but the salt water keeps you floating high enough. It was my fastest non-wetsuit HIM swim. Great post race feel. Miami nightlife to top it off.

I'll start with the good about the Austin 70.3. It's a pretty clear and nice lake as far as Texas lakes are concerned. The swim was pleasant. It's also a well run race for what they have to work with. The finish into the arena was neat. Decent food options after and the free massage was nice.

The following couple of items aren't necessarily negatives but are worth mentioning:

• October can be a crap shoot from a temperature perspective. It could be 75 or it could be 90. Last year was 70's in the days leading up to the race and it was 90 and humid on race day.
• The run is tough. It's hilly and will be an asskicker when combined with heat like last year.

Now for the bad:

• There are no hotels near the race area. The closest hotels are near the Austin airport which is 6-8 miles away. Downtown Austin is even further away.
• The race does nothing to showcase Austin. It should be on the other side of town as people have already mentioned. It could be called the Random Texas Hick Town 70.3.
• The packet pickup was very disorganized and time consuming.
• There are two transition areas. It worked okay come race day but it's still a logistical issue you'll need to navigate around. There was plenty of parking near finish and T2. Parking near T1 to drop off bikes the day before was a pain in the ass.
• Setting up your shit in T2 first and then taking a shuttle down to T1/Start is a bit of a pain. It adds a lot of time to the process.
• I already mentioned how shitty the roads were on the bike but it's worth repeating several times. I had wanted to do the Austin race before but the negative feedback about the roads kept me away. Last year I said screw it and figured it can't be that bad. I was wrong. The first few miles or so are pretty decent and then it turns into about 40 miles of bone rattling chip seal, ruts and cracks. I live in Texas so I ride my fair share of chip seal but this stuff was godawful. Yes, the drought made things worse but the roads sucked to begin with. You couldn't ride on the shoulder because the road was so bad. I rode most of it on the yellow line in the middle of the road. I was passing people using the other side of the road at times because slower riders were also riding in the middle. There was also a section of road (maybe 100m long) that was actually missing. The last 10 miles or so are on a better quality road but it's a busy road with a very narrow shoulder. I was in a later wave and averaged about 23 mph on the bike so I was passing a lot of people. Passing on the last section was not only difficult but dangerous.

I'd go back in a heartbeat if they moved it to the other side of Austin. It's a shame I won't drive to a race 2.5 hours away from me because it sucks.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

This. When you weren't navigating the cracks it was bumpy chip seal pavement. My memory from the ride is "barren wasteland." The swim was fine, crappy ride, run was OK, not at all scenic, and a very crowded 3 lap course.

I had high hopes for my first visit to what I'd always heard was a great area but was pretty disappointed. I did do a lot of exploring downtown which was fine but the "country" really disappointed me.

Agreed. I liked the swim venue and thought the arena finish and the atmosphere (there was awesome supporter presence) was brilliant. Catered well for vegetarians at the finish too!

The heat/humidity was a killer last year. Bearing in mind that I live in New Mexico, so we've got good dry heat.
I didn't think the run was super hilly, but I live in a mountainous area. It's all relative...

I stayed down near the airport. It worked well for the race but meant that hanging out in Austin was a bit more hassle. Totally doable, but not as good as it could've been. I've stayed in downtown Austin before and this wasn't the same type of experience. Packet pickup was hidden behind the expo and you had to bounce around between desks too much. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't a highlight.

The two transition areas did work really well come race day. I was sceptical when I was setting up, but I didn't have any issues with parking, etc. I did cut the timing a little close for getting my stuff into T2, but that was my fault mostly.
I was in the very last wave and spent the entire time passing people. The roads were crappy -- worse than Northern New Mexico. The general condition wasn't enough to put me off, but I ride a lot of bad roads. The cracks were fairly appalling. They'd done a decent job of filling some of the smaller cracks, but that just made the road more bumpy. The bigger cracks were pretty well marked, but it made the folks I was overtaking weave a lot so I found myself by the middle of the road a lot too (I think I only needed to cross the centre-line once though).
The missing road surface wasn't as bad as it sounds (my opinion only). It was totally rideable and didn't seem to be a puncture hazard. The worst thing about it was that it was a bottleneck and bunched everyone up. I really don't think it was even as long as 100m. It would've been much better to not have it, but the cracks were a much bigger hazard and will be this year too, whereas the missing road surface should only be an issue for last year's race.



Other than the heat and humidity (and less run training than was ideal) I enjoyed the run. The swim was fun and I liked having the race through/around the park there. The road conditions were disappointing, but didn't ruin my day. I'd go back, but only if it fit my calendar really well (because it would give me a good excuse to visit Austin again). This year it doesn't fit my calendar and I don't feel the need to make it fit my calendar.


I enjoyed the race despite the crappy roads. If crappy roads will be a deal-breaker then this is a race to forget about IMO.

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http://ironvision.blogspot.com ; @drSteve1663

Last year, they were worse than Racine (in my opinion). Racine has those expansion joints that are annoying, but Austin had massive, dangerous cracks (many running the direction of the road, causing a lot of people to ride way too the left, creating blocking scenarios) and a ton of chip seal. They kept saying the bad roads in Austin were due to the drought, but who knows.

I agree with one of the previous posters that the swim was very pleasant. That was the ONE part of the race I liked.