http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2006/11/16/news/news03.txt
Has anyone riden on these roads?
link doesn’t work
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I think the link should be:
http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2006/11/16/news/news03.txt
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I think that may be an improvement. Although the first half of the course is great with some nice hills, the second half is just plain funky. I stayed up in Hayden when I did the race and the area was really beautiful up there.
I loved riding around the dog track and on Centennial trail. Those parts were cool.
Interesting comments on there:
Post Falls Police Chief Hayes supports seeking reimbursement for extra city expenses such as traffic control and street sweeping incurred during the event. Those costs have hovered around $11,000 each year. Hayes wrote in an earlier memo to the City Council. “I simply do not support spending tax dollars to support an out-of-state, for-profit company that doesn’t pay any property tax in our community.”
Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson said his agency wouldn’t be able to provide the same service as Post Falls.
“We don’t have the resources, whether they want to pay us or not,” Watson said. “If they choose to run the route through the county rather than a municipality, they’re going to need a traffic plan and staffing because I don’t have anything to bring to the party. We are maxed out.”
“This is an Ironman-branded event, so it would have to remain a challenging course,” said Race director Andy Emberton
Apparently he didn’t attend the Clearwater 70.3 function.
I think the best comments are futher down in the message board section. Sounds like some of the folks out to the north seriously hate people…
I’ll definitely be on the lookout for the “I might open up my gun range that day” guy if we have to ride that way in June…
Noah
It’s all posturing and saving face. Post Falls bitched a little too loud for coverage of costs in 2006 and CdA City council was pissed. It is definitely a move to screw Post Falls. Hayden is awesome riding, would still be challenging for sure.
I did not know that difficulty of the course was intentionally worked in to the bike course design. I figured that they chose their courses based on what really works best given all considerations (traffic, overall safety, government agencies, road quality, among many others…) and given these factors some courses just turned out to be difficult (i.e. Canada, Lake Placid, particularly). I didn’t think that Ironman would have a problem with turning it into an easy course if it worked out for the best for all other bike course choice factors.