My friends and I signed up for the T100 in Vegas. They FINALLY released the course maps last week, but we are going back and forth with “customer service” about cutoff times.
What we’ve been told is that the race ends at 14:30 (2:30 pm) period. But the waves start at 7:05 am and continue for an hour or until everyone is in the water.
“CS” told us that it doesnt matter when you enter the water, the cutoff time is the same and they seed people based on stated swim time.
This means, those who swim the fastest get into the water first and have more time than those who swim slower.
This makes NO SENSE to me. I’ve never seen a race like this before, usually it’s a sliding scale meaning, you get XX hours based on when you start the race.
Anyone have thoughts, input, info, on this? I’m not sure the “CS” person knows what the heck is going on.
One the one hand I could simply write: “just be faster”.
On the other hand I can humor you and do the calculations for you: waves start at 07:05am and, considering the entries, they’ll be done by 07:30am (even races like IM Frankfurt with 2500 participants are done in 25 minutes for AG). This gives everyone at least 7 hours to complete the T100 distance. With IM 70.3 cut-off of 8h30min, this sounds right.
“CS” informed us that, based on our registrations (and the estimated swim pace that we put in), I was seated at a 7:20 start position, my buddy was also 7:20 but his wife was 7:50. Which…the use of 7:50 as a start position somewhat negates your thought process…a start of 7:50 would have 6:10 to finish which she will most likely not be able to do. This is the crux of our issue.
It is fairly normal to have races that have course cutoffs based on a hard time of day rather than chip time. They can only close the roads and have the volunteers out for so long. That really stinks that they did not make this known earlier.
Maybe, but the run is all on paths with a couple of road crossings: no road closures required. So the critical cut off (at this venue) is to make it to T2, but depends on organiser.
They’re still limited by their permits, staff, time required to break everything down and pack up. It’s a time crunch for a lot of these organizers, especially depending on the location of the race. Swim seeds fastest to slowest for safety reasons. I’d rather afford the support staff a better opportunity to watch the field and identify individuals potentially in distress, as I’ve been in races with deaths in the water.
The permits go beyond just the road closures as well. You’re essentially renting the city’s space and you’re often subject to their terms in some cases (especially if it’s a bigger city like this). They want you in and out of their space, and all the legal people and insurance companies and delving into their risk management issues behind the scenes too.
Chris - you may realise this, but this is out at Lake Las Vegas (no “bigger city” involved) and this is a golf resort which is the host venue with, effectively, a perimeter exercise track which will be used for the run.
It’s going to offer a great run (with ‘scenery’) and reward ‘proper’ runners. I haven’t plotted the AG run loop but the Pro one is 6 laps of 2.9km with 60m of climb per lap (365m = 1200ft). Will be very different to most 70.3 run courses and not just because 18km <> 21.1km.
Yeah this race course doesn’t even go into metro Henderson like the two 70.3 Worlds courses did back in the day. That run course was also hilly in that it was 3 loops of either up or down but it was in downtown.
