The McKellips section of the IMAZ bike course has been repaved. The entire 3 mile section is now nice, smooth blacktop. As far as road conditions go, this was by far the worst section of the course. Since it is a 3-loop, out and back course, this means we will have an additional 18 miles of nice, new roads for the November race.
thank you for the update. That is great.
Have not seen the course. You said this was the worst part so is the rest good to go? Nothing like smooth blacktop!!
I thought the roads were in great shape last year (minus the recently repaired section) in comparison to the roads I trained on. Smooth surfaces void of potholes. On the Beeline Hwy section, stay in the car lane (that is dedicated to the race.) The sides of the road appeared to have a lot of small (glass, gravel, etc.) debris. Today, I just happened to inspect the wheels that I used during that race. There was no damage due (cuts, punctures, glass embedded,) to the roads.
As your race rehearsal, go to the furthest point out on the course and ride it backwards down the hill of Beeline. It is relatively still clean riding on the sides. We rode down for about six or seven miles and then flipped it. If you do the same, it will give you a sense of the most difficult section of the course…i.e. it isn’t difficult at all!
Thanks. Sounds like a great escape from midwest roads
I’m doing Vineman next weekend, and IMAZ in November, and I’m told the Vineman roads are quite bumpy, so it might be nice at IMAZ to have good roads to counteract the large crowd of folks registered.
Vineman roads are OK the first 5 miles…after you make the sharp right and go under the road (i.e. the technical part), the roads were filled with potholes (2 yrs ago). Some large enough to swallow you up! After about mile 17 ish, the roads improve tremendously and are OK for the rest of the course. IMAZ roads are much nicer in comparison.