I’ve done Arizona three times and will have to agree to disagree with you

I agree, most of the roads were fine. They were almost perfect up til Andrews. The congestion was fairly bad however, especially back toward town where the pace slowed to a crawl at points and there wasn't much you could do without putting others at risk.

I didn't like the run course at all. There have to be better route options.

Side note, sat next to Eduardo Sandi (the pro who finished 8th) on the shuttle to the swim start. Didn't know those guys take the same bus as the AGers which was interesting. We briefly discussed Tomas's win in Texas, and he said none of the Mexican triathletes were surprised as he'd been absolutely crushing it in training. Super nice kid, hope he has a bright future.

Yeah I listened to Pro Tri News yesterday & they were all loving the 1:48:48 bike split in Samorin. I heard that & my first thought was how in the world. We've been very complimentary of Race Ranger. Their CEO messaged me earlier in the season & said they appreciated what we wrote. But there's no financial incentive or anything there. I didn't know them (& still don't). I just thought it made racing more fair. I totally agree about Sam. I made it a point in early season to note that less guys were being dragged to the front of races. 70.3 Chattanooga recap was specific to that race. There will be some room to talk about a lot of these things in preview/prediction articles as the season continues to roll along.

Also raced and felt like most of the roads were fine and even the ones that were "bad" were mildly annoying, at worst. I recall longer stretches at Oceanside where we weren't on the roads so much as paths and being worried about flatting. Definitely ridden on worse roads.

That said, totally agree that this race had WAY too many people. And I'm a relatively strong swim/biker so I don't think I was anywhere near the worst of it. Definitely got stuck behind cars a few times too. Also saw an absolutely terrifying crash on one of the descents late in the race, although that had nothing to do with crowds as at that particular time things were spread out and nobody was close. I'm not even sure why she went down, maybe the shoulder rumble strip? I hope she will recover fully.