I may have the opportunity to relocate. Wondering about the tri scene and training in general.
Anyone?
contact jimmy b. of Britton’s. He is always hot and bothered to talk about things. Located off 281 between 410 and 1604. He can jabber all doy long and get you any info you might need about the “scene”
Lots of good, local races of all distances (lonestar triathlon, boerne triathlon, san antonio marathon, loads of local sprint/oly distance plus all the Austin races only an hour up the road).
Lots of good, local triathletes (Team Alamo is the local tri-team, I’m not a member so can’t give you any info on them).
Plenty of places outside the city where you can ride on country roads and be safe. Depending on which side of the city you ride on you can pick rolling hills or flat. You routinely see lots of bikers out on the weekends.
There are some very good local bike shops – Brittons (Colnago, Lightspeed) as one poster has already noted, plus there is Bike Heaven (Kuota, Cervelo, and other high-end bikes, this is the most tri-specific shop), BikeWorld (sold their soul to Trek), and another one out in Bandera (NW part of city) that I can’t remember their name (too far for me to drive, I live on NE side of city). All the bike shops have weekday/weekend group rides, plus the San Antonio Wheelmen also have group rides that they rotate around to different parts of the city every weekend. There are also some good running stores (Run Gear Run and Roger Soler’s)
I love San Antonio and think it’s a great place to live and train. The only down sides: It is HOT in the summer. It is not atypical to wake up in July/August and it’s 89 degrees at 7:00 am. So bring lots of water bottles/sunscreen and be prepared to suffer in the heat. Of course the corollary is that spring/fall training is AWESOME and winter is also fairly enjoyable. You trade off 9 months of good training for some serious suffering in the summer. Second, it is a very large city, so most riding has to be done out on the outskirts, which is getting farther and farther away every year. Lots of this depends on where you work and what you want your work-commute to be – I live/work on the far northeast side of town. I commute 15 minutes to work and ride out my front door and am in the country in 10 minutes.
All of the above bike shops and clubs (SA Wheelmen and Team Alamo) have web sites you can get on and check them out.
If you have specific questions, let me know.