First time doing Wildflower Oly. Any tips besides:
Watch out for people!!! Due to many participants being newbies?
Tips for swim (sighting landmarks?)
thanks and much appreciated.
Swim is easy, a big rectangle with big buoys, dont worry about that…Super hilly bike course, so take it easy on the way out, and negative split it. Really work the fast downhills, and get a good tuck when you can. Run is rolling, so same thing as bike, even split the first four, and then either sprint it in, or suffer because you went out too hard earlier on…It is a very difficult course as olympic ones go, so best to ease into each event, and hope that you paced it well…ANd as you said, watch out for the other guy, there are lots of folks on the course, and there are many wide turns where everyone is cutting the tangents, and it is easy to get sidetracked, and miss someone across the line going 4 mph uphill, while you are doing 50mph down it… No one wins that collision…
when you are out on the bike course, don’t wimp out on the down hills by using the brakes, go all out, it’s free speed. Same story for the run, let it all out on the down hills and by the time you hit Linch hill, you should be going full blast.
It is free speed but collisions = no speed. I will try my best but it’s not me I’m worried about, it’s the mother of 14 who cant handle their bike that worries me.
it’s the mother of 14 who cant handle their bike that worries me. \
Octomon is doing the race, may have to adjust our live coverage now…(-;
WHat is the Octomom breakfast???
14 eggs, no sausage, and someone else picks up the check…HA!!!
she might as well, since everyone and their mother “pun intended” seems to be on the Triathlon kick after J.Lo gave it publicity…
Don’t worry, she will be pulling a 14-baby Burley behind her. Stable as a marble pillar.
mm
If you are planning on camping over Saturday night only, don’t worry about getting there too early. You have a good shot at getting one of the good campsites from a Long Course competitor leaving after their race.
Make sure you know when you wave is going to start, which may be a long time from when they close the transition area. Swim is easy to follow, plenty of bouys. Unless you are in first wave of the day you will have plenty of company the whole time, but be ready for a really cramped first 100 yards.
Make sure you are in an easy gear to start. The bike out of the transition goes up a little hill then flat for about 25 yards then up Lynch which is really steep.
Going back down Lynch, I ended up at the sweet spot in time where I was sharing the road with both the last waves starting the bike and the first waves ending the run. I used my brakes.
When I did the Oly, I let it fly on the rest of the downhills which might have been a mistake. It was my first time going brake free on such a fast hill. The hill in question is a few miles before the turn around. There was someone in front of me that I getting ready to pass when I hit over 40 mph for the first time on a bike. That was okay, but what nearly ended my day was the guy who yelled “on your left” from behind and passed at about 45-50 mph. I wasn’t expecting it and got a bit startled and a little wobbly. I know my bike skills aren’t the best, but be warned that many of the people on the course will be worse than I was and just as nervous.
My recollection of the run was two miles flat and fast along the lake, one mile of hot and steep, two and three quarter miles of hot and rolling and quarter mile of steep down but my memory might not jive with the actual course layout.