Whistler is death by a thousand cuts LOL. Looking at the profile it’s kinda hard to figure out how it gets to 8500 feet but it’s just a constant onslaught all day that just adds up (and with the heat it just got progressively harder)

Assuming it’s the same in 2019 (which is an assumption), I broke it down::
Swim to bottom of Callaghan - rollers in Alta Lake road but nothing too steep, net negative to bottom of Callaghan although there are a couple of ups that you can carry a lot of speed into

Callaghan - the little bit that we did consisted of two fairly short ramps maybe 8% for a little bit to the turnaround

99 Callaghan to whistler - this is the big “climb” but it’s reqlly broken up into about 5 or 6 sections of climbing, the longest being Powerline Hill at maybe 10 minutes. If you want to see these sections look at strava whistler gran Fondo segments, they’ve got it broken up from Callaghan up to whistler.

Alta Lake Road - as noted elsewhere narrow and can be crowded, the steepest climb is here going easy between 99 and rainbow park, maybe 10% for a few seconds, people walking here later in the day. Probably 3 small climbs here otherwise but nothing much to worry about

I am 185# and ride a compact and 12-30 for this race and was glad for the 34/30 in a couple places.

Key to whistler is patience and not hammering the first leg to Callaghan and back (well key makes it seem like I rode and ran well LOL)

How did you guys find it going out and back on Alta Lake road. When I rode there in practice in 2015, the pavement was poor in some locations with some high speed descents and with traffic coming the other way, I wonder how that played out?

I found it perfectly fine, not dangerous, potholes all fixed up

However some people had a much different experience from what I’ve heard (congestion related)

The edges of the road were a bit bumpy but not half as bad as I expected. Most people tried to ride toward the center so it made it a bit more crowded. Only issue I personally had was a guy that passed me downhill on a corner way too fast. If you’re gunning for 45th in your AG just slow the eff down where appropriate. It must have been hard for pros that came on the back end of the pack.

There was one downhill curve going west toward he turnaround at a trailhead before rainbow park, so two decent accidents on each of two loops, could have been taking that curve too fast, could have been run off. Who knows.

In rain it would be a bit of a cluster

But most people did ride responsibly back there so problems IMO we’re minimal