Anyone have one? How hilly is this course?
I did this on MapMyRun and I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it is something.
There isn’t a ton of climbing, but lots of rolling hills throughout - the bigger concern is going to be the wind as last weekend when I rode the course, I had a headwind on the entire return trip (even though the course is U-shaped).
Shane
Sweet! Looks pretty good!
After looking at the elevation profile, I’m quite sure that something is weird with the total elevation gain - I had plotted the first half of the course using another program and got around 2000’ of climbing.
As for overall impressions of the course - I had posted the info about the beginning and end of the course early and is pasted below. In addition, I’ve added info about the rest:
Coming out from transition you will climb a small hill before a gradual descent towards the Dartmouth waterfront. This will give you a few minutes to transition to the bike before you have to climb a short but very steep hill as you proceed towards the MacDonald Bridge. After crossing the bridge you will have a short climb to the top of North Street and then it is primarily downhill until the rotary. Coming through the rotary you will have some pretty rough pavement and then the longest climb on the course to this point - it starts with a steep climb and then it’s fairly gradual until the crest. As you get on the highway 333 the course continues up for a few miles before it starts to slope down for the next 7 miles or so and then it’s some rollers as you get to the coast. From this point it’s mainly rollers to the turnaround with some riding along the coast and some inland. With the exception of the Dover area, the pavement is in pretty good shape and it looks like they might be repaving this area over the summer. After passing Peggy’s Cove, you will be back inland pretty much to the turnaround.
The return trip to the rotary saw lots of wind in my face (hopefully we won’t have that on race day) which led to a slow return trip, especially coming back up the long climb. After the rotary, you will go up Quinpool Road, which will have a fairly steady climb to the top of Quinpool before a mostly (completely) downhill into T2 on Lower Water Street.
With the possibility of wind in your face for the return trip, having enough gears to climb into the wind is going to be important for this course. There were times on the return climb that my 39/25 was hard to spin with a straight head wind.
On a calm day, you can make pretty good time on this course, but if there is wind, it is more than likely going to be mainly headwind on the return trip. Typical weather looks like temps betwen 24C/15C and the average wind speed for that time of year is 12km/h.
Shane