Going to be up there in a couple weeks to redeem my DNF in StG. Just curious if anybody else will be there. And for those of you who have in the past, how would you rate the different courses and the event overall?
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I did it last year. The swim is downriver, so it’s fast. Make use of the morning clothes bag though. You walk the mile from transition to the swim start and it sucks barefoot. So have flip-flops or something.
Transition was old school (one bag for everything left at your bike).
Bike course is moderately hilly, hard to maintain speed on downhills because most head into 90 deg turns. But a fair course overall. Didn’t feel any problems from cars.
The run is flat, just have to watch your footing a bit in one section.
Weather was warm when I did it but probably nothing if you’re used to the desert.
Being at the host hotel is helpful but they have a morning parking lot and shuttles to transition if you are off-site.
I did it last year, and I’m doing it again this year. It’s a great venue, feels like a lite version of Coeur d’Alene to me: fast downriver swim; beautiful, moderately hilly bike course; flat, spectator-friendly run course.
I wrote a race report for it last year, but happy to answer any questions:
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Thanks for the replies. Very happy to hear about the flat run. I suck at hills, particularly on the run. Better on the bike so long as they’re “rolling” hills.
I’m sure it will be warm, since the triathlon gods hate me and heat is my kryptonite.
I’m kind of looking forward to it, but then again, after my failure at StG this year, my confidence in long courses has been shaken.
I was within seconds of giventotri on the swim and maybe +/- 5 min on the bike - he passed me at some point. I remember crowding on some uphills but it opened up later on.
I’m not sure why but many people were mashing huge watts up the early hills, so don’t get caught up in that 
And yeah I forgot, the air is chilly in the morning in September. Another reason to use the morning clothes bag. Take it with you to the swim start and there’s a dropoff there (if they do the same setup).
Ya, I just read his race report. Not even in the same ballpark! 
I’ll honestly just be happy with a sub 8 hour finish. And not to worry about blowing up on the bike. I’ve learned the lesson about mashing early and having nothing left in the tank for the finish. I just did the Santa Barbara Long Course last month and that’s 2000ft of elevation in a ride that’s 22 miles shorter!
On the plus side you’ll finish the swim fresh. Expect maybe a 10 minute boost from the current.
That’s good to know. If that holds, that should put me at <40 minutes for the swim. That would be insane fast for me.
See everyone there. I’m excited. Looks fast and warm.
Yeah. I remember a couple of very short uphill sections, but it’s not a grind like St. George where it feels like it’s uphill in every direction. There’s also a lot more shade and it was sort of breezy last year, which was nice.
You got this. I raced St. George, Coeur d’Alene, and Boise this year, and even though Boise was pretty hot, it made me realize how brutal St. George was this year. I’m gonna miss it… but it’s definitely the hardest race I’ve done.
It me, I can’t help myself 
I love a good climb, it’s absurdly flat where I live.
It’s hot as hell today (feels like 93ºF, I was sweating bullets at the athlete briefing), but looks like it’ll cool down nicely on race day; high of 74ºF on Sunday. Water temp is 70.5ºF today.
Well, all is said and done. I had a great race for me.
I got up there early evening on Friday, had a friend help me drive up. Saturday I got checked in and the bike in transition, did a little shopping in the athlete village. Very little shopping, only a handful of vendor tents. I guess because there were a couple other Ironman events going on the same weekend. I was hoping to find a Zoot tent but left disappointed. Ironman still got several hundred more of my dollars though.
Got all done with that about noon and promised my friend she would have the rest of the day for wine tasting, so I got to DD while she got to sample the local flavors. Got back to the hotel around 8pm with some take out from Panda and just relaxed for the next couple hours.
I actually got some good sleep, somewhere around six hours, so can’t really complain about that. Got up and it wasn’t as cool as I was expecting, which only compounded my fears about why they were forecasting such a drop in the temps from Saturday to Sunday. But got to the shuttles around 5:30 and into transition about 6. Got my gear all set up and began the long walk to swim out.
PR for the swim, unsurprising, since it was current assisted. Swam 28:30. I might have been a little faster but I got stuck in the rut of “pylon turns” on the first two buoys, which lead me to veer off course and swim much more of a zig-zag than ideal. I fixed that error and I continued to zig-zag, but kept it to a minimum.
The bike was actually a bit longer than I expected as they described it as “flat” but with 1800ft of gain. What they don’t say is over 1000 of that happens in the first 10-15 miles. It was almost as bad as Snow Canyon! After that little mountain, there was a fair amount of flat but I would have considered it to be more rolling hills than flat. Don’t remember what my exact time is (I do have it on my Velo so I’ll check later) but I think I was just shy of 3.5 hours. On the bike, I can be a FOP age grouper in flat terrain, but I slow way down in the climbs. I passed dozens of people in the flats and descents only to watch them all chug right on past me going up the hill. Some of that is sub-optimal gearing on the bike (I was counting on less aggressive climbing) but mostly it has to do with me. I need to lose a couple dozen pounds. Anywho….
And this is the point where I will circle back to that weather consideration as mentioned above. Much as I feared, the reason the temperature was so noticeably cooler Sunday than it was on Saturday is a front did move in. All in all, that wasn’t such a bad thing, but it would have been ideal if it had moved in just a couple hours later. I began to feel noticeable wind after coming down the mountain around mile 16 or so. The good part is that with the route being a big loop, it reduced the amount of time that was a straight on head wind. It did still slow me and some other riders down with gusty cross winds that could really upset the bike, but it wasn’t as horrible as the head wind I fought last year on the Beeline. And then it began to rain around mile 40. That slowed me down because I’m so unused to riding in the rain, particularly at descent speeds. But I exercised a little bit of restraint and kept the bike upright the whole way. The rain continued into the run before finally breaking up and beginning to clear in the early afternoon.
I intentionally took a good 10 minutes with each transition for hydration and nutrition, but got on the run with plenty of time to spare, even considering the run is by far my worst event. Now, according to the website, the run is considered hilly, but with 358ft of gain over the entire course, it’s pretty mild. Far flatter in comparison than the bike course was. Just a few ups and downs, most of which were no more than 50-100m long, with the steepest ones also being the shortest ones. I was keeping a good pace, again, for me, through about the first 8 miles, and had a solid chance to come in around seven hours total time. But around that 8-9 mile mark the fatigue really began to set in. I slowed down and even had to walk short distances after the 11 mile mark. I fell short of that very optimistic 7 hour possibility but I still beat my original objective of >7.5 hours with a total time of 7:24.
While very fatigued and certainly very sore, I experienced hardly any cramping throughout. That’s really saying something given the electrolyte depletion and subsequent cramping is the cause of my failure in St. George. It’s not total redemption, and never can be since I can’t run StG again, but at least I can put this one down in my personal win column.
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Glad it went well for you! If you got cheered on by a guy in a red hoodie just outside the Marriott near the finish line, that was me.
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I’ll just assume you were one of the many people cheering us BOP finishers on! 
Congrats! It was a great event. Lots and lots of positive cheering folks. A very fair bike course.
Here’s my race report for this year’s race, if anyone’s curious:
Can’t believe I’ve done ten of these things already. I’m already dreaming of the next one.
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Sounds like your swim was even better than predicted! Hope the bits of info on here helped out.
I like the location, I hope the community supports that race for a long time.
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Great read, love the user name.
So I did the race too. 4:44 total time in 55-59 for 6th. (23min/2:37/1:37) Ended up with two porta stops (1 in t2 and one on the run), which moved me from 4th to 6th ;(. The wind was definitely strong on the bike. I knew it would be, but seemed like we had more head wind than tail wind. It definitely slowed me down a fair bit. I’m only 145lbs at 5’10”, so I got blown around quite a bit.
Sounds like you need to work on transitions a bit? I think I was 3min each and T2 had a porta stop. Our times were similar, but I made up a fair bit of time in transition on you. You could break 5 with quick T1/T2.
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Yep, my transitions are slow. I’m working on it.
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