It wasn't just IM events. Both the USAT Sprint National Championships (NDL @ Cleveland, DL @ Bradenton) had the swim cancelled. We're sending our 18 best Sprint Duathletes to the Triathlon World Championships.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

climate change? Not pink

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I believe Maryland went as planned. September and October can be very rainy.
Rivers (like the Ohio and Tennessee) will flood now just like they did hundreds of years ago.

They had to slightly modify the bike course at Maryland due to high water, but still got the almost full distance (I had 111 miles). Weather was absolutely perfect on race day, though a bit warm when I was running.

Yup, welcome to the new normal ...

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With the issues some events seem to have almost annually, I do wonder if some of them are in poorly chosen locations.

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29 years and counting

Yup, Maryland was very good after a few years of poor conditions one way or another. Kona conditions appeared way better than normal. Weather is just hit and miss. Something we all need to be able to get used to.

Boulder and Whistler went off as planned, although both were unusually warm.

10 years ago when I was new to the sport and started tracking friends doing IM the races never appeared to be impacted by weather. It was something you wouldn't even have considered beforehand, that the course would have to be changed at the last minute or the swim cancelled. Nowadays the chance of having a standard 140.6 distance is maybe 50/50 at best - which very much sucks for first timers. I have done (only) 6 IM's but luckily for me none of them had distances modified or partially cancelled.

Yep, swimming in rivers isn't ideal.

What US IM (too many 70.3 to pay attention to) has never been effected/altered by weather?

IM WI?
IM AZ?

Congratulations humans for destroying the natural balance of an entire planet.

Big Shoulders swim in Chicago cancelled due to weather (only 2nd time in history)

2nd time in 3 years, though.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Regardless of one's thoughts on climate change, there is a difference between weather and climate. This is about weather in a normally volatile time of the year, which just so happens to have occurred in 2 consecutive years. This isn't a trend yet, at best it's a blip.

While they CAN be very rainy, depending on the whims of tropical systems, over time September and October are two of the drier months of the year, and typically low flow on the Ohio and Tennessee.

This year was quite unusual over a fairly large area.

Isn't IMAZ in November because of weather? E.g, it used to be held in March and was pummeled by wind.

Well, IMAZ can still be windy and/or rainy in November. I think the question, though, is whether the event ever had a canceled swim or shortened bike or run leg due to weather, and I believe the answer is no. In 2015, though, they'd had a lot of rain before the event that caused some runoff into Tempe Town Lake, and as I had some stomach issues after the swim I wondered about the water quality that year.

Ian

Yeah, I don't think any portion of IMAZ was ever canx or cut short, but when I did it in 2010 we were lucky to have the swim. Here's how the lake looked not too many weeks before the race.

I raced it that year - had no idea it had been that bad!

The global climate drives weather patterns and those weather patterns have been increasing in extremes and volatility for decades. As far as scientists are concerned it's absolutely a trend and very likely has multiple anthropogenic causal factors. We've been fucking it up for generations and now we are starting to see the ramifications.

I think WTC used to put an awful lot of thought into when and where a race was. It had to be a good place to race and the time of year mattered with an eye towards the weather.

Now I think they put a lot of thought into how many people are within a day's drive and then hopefully they can make a passable course and run the race at the time of year that people will like and sign up.

In North America we went from 1 to 2 to 6 and now to 12 along with a couple dozen+ 1/2's. You used to get Graham Fraser and the entire experienced IM crew setting up a course. Now you get a local RD who has franchised the name.

When you go through that kind of change you are going to put yourself in a position where more things interfere with race day.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I think Santa Rosa and Texas went as planned this year, as well as the aforementioned Whistler and Boulder. Whistler could have been bad, the fires/smoke around here (throughout the PNW) were really bad in mid August.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

And then there are known, and there could very likely be many unknown yet to be discovered, positive feedback loops. This is going to get worse faster than the most pessimistic predictions.

We need to cut carbon emissions pronto. And then start planting trees, or maybe bamboo because it grows very fast, letting them grow, then burying it underground, and we need to keep doing it until CO2 returns to normal. That's basically like putting all those carbon atoms in oil and coal back where we found them.