Yesterday was the inaugural Battle at Midway Triathlon in Midway, Utah.
This was an amazing race and one that Slowtwitcher’s may want to consider for future years.
There was a nice pro turnout with Craig Walton and Emma Snowsill taking top honors.
Anyway, here is my report:
The level of professionalism and detail that went into the race has been apparent for months, and really showed on race day! The check in process on Saturday and Sunday was smooth and quick, and the swag was the best I’ve ever seen. They had a vendor expo with about 20 vendors, including TriSports.com which was great. The course was just awesome, tough run, but awesome.
The swim:
They got the race started with style. Playing on the theme of the Battle at Midway in WWII a guitarist played the national anthem while vintage WWII planes flew overhead. The race was then started by the firing of a canon. Small touches, but showed the level of detail the race directors took to make the race nice. The swim was in Deer Creek, at a state park, and was great. The water is clean and the temperature was perfect. On the way out, with every breath to my left, I had an amazing view of snow capped Mt. Timpanogos. Just beautiful, and made me really happy.
T1:
Coming out of the water, there was carpet and sod put down so our feet stayed nice and comfortable and were essentially clean getting into the transition zone. At the beginning of the transition zone they had wet suit strippers on a carpet which was very nice.
The bike:
The bike course was beautiful. On the busiest part of the ride, they had one lane of traffic closed, so it was like having the road to ourselves. It felt so good to not have to worry about cars. From Deer Creek the course did 2 loops through Midway and Heber. There were some inclines and declines, but no major hills. Overall, very scenic ride, with very little to no traffic (where they had closed the road).
T2:
At Soldier Hollow State Park, home of the 2002 Olympic Cross Country Skiing and Biathlon events. Smooth and strait forward.
The RUN:
The run was on the ski trails at Soldier Hollow, and the course was hard but amazing. Being on trails, there were NO CARS, which was awesome. The run followed an up and down, twisty, loopy path around the finish area. This was really cool because you could hear the announcer from just about everywhere on the run course and could see the spectator area from most of the run course as well (which was cool for the spectators to see the runners so much). And, it was beautiful, great views of the mountains, the valley, the deep blue sky. But, it was HARD. I guess a few of the pros said they thought it was the hardest run course in triathlon.
The finish:
Incredible! The food at the finish was great, including pizza stacked a mile high as promised. At the finish you ran a long strait section in front of the spectators and next to the scoreboard which was showing the results (very cool to have real time results). The announcer did a great job of announcing everyone as they were about 100 m out from the finish line. At the finish line, you were greeted with a great BAM finisher’s hat. The swag was incredible.
Overall, this was a great race. The organization and attention to details was incredible. The course was very well thought out. The venue can’t be beat, unbelievably pretty area (check out the pictures on the BAM website, www.bamtriathlon.com). It’s also a great venue for out of towners. It takes about 1 hour to get from SLC to Midway, and you can go posh (stay at the Zermatt or Homestead resorts) or you can go low budget and camp near by.
Bryan