Yeah, I get that. Given summer conditions in the Valley and Tucson, I understand why races that time of year shift up to Lake Mary and Show Low.
But conditions down there are great from October thru April for events. But between Castle Creek in early Oct and CactusMan in late April, there’s almost nothing – especially non pool and Oly distance.
Heck, I’m itching so bad to do a race that I’m willing to put up with the pool lap swim at Anthem Holiday Classic in a couple weeks…
The seasonal limitations there aren’t unique, though. Up in Pac NW, the training season goes indoors from basically mid October thru March. Tri folks up there just spend lots of time on Zwift and Rouvy, as i assume folks in TUS and PHX do in the summer.
I suspect there are just some unique legacy reasons why the local seasonal race calendar is so much more robust up in WA than down here in AZ.
Uh…there are no lakes near Tucson, the closest is Patagonia Lake which is 80 miles away.
Tri-Family Racing used to put on Bartlett Lake Triathlon, some years they’d do 2! Those were a nice warm up for IMAZ for folks, tons of climbing on that course. I volunteered for them there. 4 Peaks hasn’t done a race there, but they do 2 at Lake Pleasant now and one at TTL, so unsure they need to add a fourth at Bartlett unless there is demand (I don’t think there is any right now).
@Bryancd do you mean Bartlett Dam road? Bush Highway runs from Power Rd to Saguaro Lake and then connects to the Beeline. Or was there a triathlon at Saguaro? I feel like that could be a great place for a race.
There are all sorts of great Phoenix races that are now gone: the Desert Duathlon, the Papago Park xterra, Sagauro Lake xterra, 70.3, Generations Tri for all the old guys, ASU tri, and on and on. The best “local” tri in Phoenix was the old Rocky Point Mexico race run by Tucson Racing. Unfortunately no more Rocky Point races.
