Let me first start off by saying that Rev3 did a good job in putting this event together and thanks to all the volunteers. They were amazing!
However, I ended up with a very bad experience and my first DNF due to crashing on the bike at mile 47 aid station.
First I want to start with the swim (this is not Rev3 related). I am from Cleveland so I have always avoided swimming in the lake. Somedays the lake looks better than others. The lake conditions were great and water was calm and was hoping for a good swim. However, half way through my swim I got a massive sneeze attack. I have bad seasonal allergy and I am on prescription medication for that. However, I never sneez while swimming. Not sure if this was from a near by boat or something in the water. Anyone experience anything like that? The only other time I sneezed was after finishing the swim at Racine. Maybe something with the great lakes.
Now, to the worst part of the race. This is my 5th HIM distance and first non WTC. I have done Racine which seems to get a bad rep here for bad road conditions and did Pocono last year which provided a very technical bike condition with cold and wet roads. However, I found the Rev3 CP bike couse to be the worst bike course I have ever been on. Some sections were great but other sections as you get closer to the park are full of pot holes and cracks and can be dangerouse.
I think the position of last aid station for the half was a big mistake. That small section of the road need some seriouse repair and this is where I wiped out.
As I got closer to the aid station, I started slowing down. I got my water bottle from the volunteer and thanked him. As I was putting the water bottle in my aero bottle holder I hit a pot hole and went down hard. Ended up with tons of road rash and hopefully just a sore right hip and now set back in my IM training for later this fall.
The bike looks ok but will be taking it in for check up later today. I was able to get back on the bike and finish but knew the day was over for me as soon as reached T2 and was barely able to walk the bike to my area.
Now the road conditions were bad, however I think the worst section was Rt6, the road has 4 lanes and it is a very busy road. This road connects Rt2/I 90 to Cedar Point. The police were there to block traffic on the intersections but that was it. Couldn’t one lane be blocked for athletes? I heard from one of the volunteers that a lady got hit by a car, not sure where exactly but if I want to take a guess, it is that section or Cedar Point road. I hope she is ok!
The other Rev3 event I did was Knoxville Oly last year. Roads there were not good either and also some sections were free for all and know of an athlete that got hit by a car there too. There is a post about it on his blog and probably here as well.
I would love to do Rev3 again next year espcially CP since it is only one hour away from home. I know organizing these events are nothing but easy. I think they have done a great job and can’t say enough about the staff and volunteers. However, maybe I haven’t been to enough WTC races yet but the one I have been to seem to have a lot better control over traffic and better road condition for the bike portion and think Rev3 can do better.
I did the full yesterday and I have to say your complaints are unjustified. I crashed at REV3 Knoxville last year during a warmup hitting some rail road tracks…does that allow me the right to blame the whole organization for that.
NO.
Just because you crashed and some of the roads were beat up (only a few) that you think its productive to publicly blast them I think is outrageous.
Give REV3 a break. They put on amazing events at great venues so that the whole family experience is top notch. They purposefully choose course that are near civilization so spectators have something to do while their athlete races for 4+ hours. And to close major roads (like Rt 6) is shows how uninformed of race logistics you are. Police are one of the highest expenses for a RD and getting enough volunteers is difficult. I think for the race I help direct the Police charge overtime prices (like $40+ an hour). I bet you like where you race fee is currently priced at.
Online forums allow people like you to give organizations a bad name and to do that to REV3 is just not right.
Heres what I think you should do before you post online next time:
Volunteer at a race
Help direct a race to really see what goes into it.
Most importantly go personally speak with the RD (Eric – who I spoke to directly yesterday to thank him for a good job as always.)
Sorry to hear about the DNF, hope it doesn’t ruin your IM training. I was there and know the section your referring to. It was really bad short section, I went REALLY slow through that entire section because I new it could get bad in there. I remember going under an underpass around mile 40ish maybe and running up on some massive pot holes that were marked with paint. Problem was it was dark and you couldn’t see it until you were on it. Do you know what I’m talking about? The 5-6 mile section running back into Cedar Point was really bad to, but the traffic was the worst, slowed me down big time.
All in all great event and well organized! I really enjoyed my first REV3, wish I couldve rode some coasters though …just ran out of time
I am not sure where on Route 6, or any of the bike course, there are 4 lanes of road. Are you talking about the area by the school for the bad roads? Those are probably the worst on the course. The Chasee going into the park is bad but just bumpy. It doesn’t have too many large potholes. Sorry for the DNF, and CTC has open swims at Columbia Park on Tuesdays in the summer. Come out and join us next year.
The rev3 Knoxville roads are pretty good. I live in Knoxville and ride on the course all the time. I’m sorry to hear of your DNF. That really sucks.
Jay
I didn’t mean to bash on Rev3 on this post. I think a good company like to listen to both good and bad cristicism and Rev3 is no doubt is a good company and I plan on doing more Rev3s and go back to CP next year.
The event, the Rev3 staff, and all the volunteer were absouletly AMAZING
Yes, I am very frustrated for crashing and not being able to finish and wanted to point out some of the things I have noticed about the road conditions. I was going to do that whether I crashed or not and I know Rev3 will take my opinion and others on this forum and try to make the event even better. This is no doubt a great event and great venue for athletes and family.
Aid station 4 where I crashed was around mile 47 for the half, not sure if that is the school area but it is really a bad section and putting an aid station there where athletes try to grab drinks and don’t have full control of the bike is probably not the right idea.
As for Route 6 traffic, sorry that was a 2 lanes road not 4 like I said (thanks Kenb321). I wasn’t asking to close the whole road but was wondering if closing one lane for athletes is a possibility or maybe putting orange cones or something to seperate cars from athletes. Or just rerouting and avoiding that section completely. I felt I was battling with cars and athletes on that section and don’t think it is safe to have over a thousand athelete go through.
I did the half also, my first. Sorry about the DNF, that sucks. Overall, I thought the road conditions were okay compared to sprints and OLYs I have done. There were good and bad spots. I agree that the last aid station on the half could have been better placed, but a couple things on that. First, there may not have been good other options in that area, never know what the RD has to deal with in getting permission to set up a station. Second, I’m pretty sure we rode through that section on the way out as well, so there was some warning. I remember thinking what a crappy section that was on the way out (mile 8 or 9 I think). I could be wrong. Anyway, Rt. 6 did get a little hairy with bike and car traffic, but I don’t think there’s a good alternative and its a pretty short section. I bet it would not have bothered you as much without the recent crash in your mind. Given the location of Cedar Point, I think they did a pretty good job on the course.
Do you do 100% of training indoors? What 50 mile section of road doesn’t have a couple bad spots? If you were unlikely to crash/hit a pot hole if you were not filling your aerobottle, then this mishap is on your momentary lack of attention. It happens to all of us but your happened to come at a bad time. What would you have done if there were a water bottle in the road?
As for closing a lane, how does this seem at all reasonable? We you preventing from avoiding obstacles or other riders? Was there a near miss with a car? Having an intersection patrolled by police is what is to be expected and exactly what you got. I would not encourage RDs to close roads if not necessary. We are a big inconvenience to towns so making unreasonable demands is not going to reflect well upon athletes, the organization or the sport.
Is sucks that you had a bad day and I hope it doesn’t end your season but don’t transfer that disappointment onto someone else–Rev3, m-dot, whomever.
I sometimes sneeze after swimming in a pool, in bright sunlight, mowing the lawn or going for a walk. Any idea why this might be? Should I move back into my bubble? Should the pool be drained? Get a grip on reality.
I completely agree with you… they should have spent millions of dollars to re-pave every section of road for us. (If I knew how to put that in pink, I would.)
Seriously though, there is only 1 way out of Cedar Point and its along that stretch. There were 2 rough spots on nearly 60 miles of road… thats pretty good in my book.
I don’t suggest that you do the Longhorn 70.3 if you had problems with the CP roads. Someone mentioned there were two bad sections at CP. At Longhorn there are probably only two good section.
I don’t suggest that you do the Longhorn 70.3 if you had problems with the CP roads. Someone mentioned there were two bad sections at CP. At Longhorn there are probably only two good section.
The OP clearly had what sounded like fair criticisms of the race. Areas with bad potholes and stretches where cars might have been a problem with racers.
I think races are responsible to point out dangerous potholes and if at all possible consider the safety of bikers. The OP felt this was not completely followed by the race.
I say its fair criticism. Now if we could get other racers who know these exact spots to see if there was indeed a problem or just bad luck on the OP’s part.
I think the op definitely piled on a little in his arguments but overall I think he would agree that REV3 did a very good job putting together the course. I am also a Clevelander who has done the past two full races up there and this bike course was a ton better than last year’s. The only section of road that I would consider “bad” was where his crash happened. Soon after that crash, riders made the turn onto route 6 to head back into the park. Unfortunately it is pretty busy on that section of route 6 but certainly better than a typical training day without support. The road surface on 6 is really pretty good and certainly better than 90% of the roads we get in the Greater Cleveland area. I think the fact the crash immediately preceded this last bit of riding on 6 and the final approach into the park magnified the anger of the actual crash. Kind of like getting kicked when your already down. My two cents.
I feel very bad for you. Crashing sucks. Crashing in a race really sucks. But, I would surmise that most triathlon race crashes happen at or around aid stations. I know I have had my share of close calls. However, I think the RD put the aid station where it was because riders were already forced to slow down due in equal parts to the rough road and multiple curves around that school zone. Not sure if you use an aerodrink (Torhans, Profile or the like) or just straight up bottle cages but my advice is to get that bottle or fluid on your bike as quickly as possible wherever an aid station is placed on a course.
Rev3 did a great job as far as I was concerned. Props also should go out to the Cleveland Tri Club (CTC) for their continued support and assistance to Eric, Charlie and the rest of the Rev3 crew. This company is growing and it’s groups like CTC that are a catalyst for that growth across all of their venues…
Bad roads are a fact of life in North America. Our road infrastructure has never been in such bad shape. The problem, is that no one did the math to figure out the on-going cost(HUGE) for all the road infrastructure that was built. People want new roads but the infrastructure from all the existing roads built 10 - 15 years go or more is falling apart at a rapid rate. With governments at all levels strapped with massive debts, I don’t see this situation changing any time soon. We’re falling further and further behind on this.
If you ride in an area that has great roads - consider yourself lucky. Where I ride a lot in my area, many roads have the look and feel of the cobbled sections of Paris-Roubaix - that’s just the way it is. You know it’s bad when the gravel and dirt roads are better than the paved roads!!
I am so sorry about your crash and DNF. After months of training you don’t want the outcome of your day to be a DNF.
I was actually surprised at how good the road conditions were. I’m not from the area and had never been there, so I had relied heavily on race reports to prepare. I was expecting roads that were chip sealed for mile after mile or had so many potholes they would look like they had been carpet-bombed. Instead, many sections had been repaved since last year! Compared to what we get around home (Ottawa, Ontario) I thought this was a nice smooth course.
I do agree about the placement of the aid stations, however. And not just the last one on the half. The one around mile 32 of the half (where the Full met up with the Half) was very bad. It was extremely congested when I got there: I saw two crashes happen, and cyclists veering in all directions. I’m not sure why things were so bad. A lot of the confusion seemed to come from athletes with very poor bike handling skills. But mostly it was because the road was narrow, people were distracted by the hard turn they had just made, having two streams of cyclists merging and trying not to hit each other. I couldn’t understand why the last aid station on the half was in a turn, although they were probably trying to take advantage of the fact that it was a school so they weren’t in the way of traffic. Signs warning of an upcoming aid station in a mile would also have helped; cyclists would have sorted themselves according to whether or not they needed to use the station and would have been sharper on their bikes.
One thing that could have really helped with traffic along the crowded sections was having little signs up along the road the week before the race warning of an upcoming bike race. They do this at Timberman and Mooseman (and I’m sure elsewhere; I just haven’t been to other races.) Cedar Point Road was the only part of the course where I wish a lane had been closed. I was on my second wind at that point and much faster than the people ahead of me, but I couldn’t pass because of vehicles lined up behind other riders. And riders trying to avoid bumps or potholes were moving out in front of cars, so drivers were accelerating and decelerating unexpectedly.
But these are all things you learn with experience. The volunteers were fantastic and so energetic. Aid stations were plentiful and well stocked. They had police at almost all the intersections. Overall, it was pretty great.
Fair enough. I guess I am just over reacting over bad experience. Happens to all of us. I just need to HTFU and move on.
I see nothing wrong with your post. Some others are just hyper sensitive and/or thin skinned. Others just like to pound their chest in hopes of inflating their ego a little more. I’m sure you will make the same comments on REV3 athlete survey. Not much REV3 can do about the roads, but maybe they can reconsider where aid stations are.
I’m an RD for a mountain bike race and take all compliments and criticism (online and in survey’s) seriously. Some are just people venting, but most are people offering constructive criticism. Forums such as this provide a wealth of feedback to RD’s.
I am used to bad roads and my training rides usually go through worst roads but you get used to that.
I think most agree that area by the school is bad and placing an aid station in that particular section need to be revisited.
As you approach an aid station you make eye contact with the volunteer and try to communicate what you need water or whatever. At that point and those few seconds you are not in full control of the bike as you are trying to grab your supply from the volunteer. In my case, I was in the wrong spot and hit a pothole and the crash happened. No big deal, it is part of the sport and I just need to deal with it.
I am hoping that Rev3, IM or any RD don’t just look at this as an angry post by a frustrated athlete who DNF but try to identify what can be improved and hopefully save a future athlete from possibly something worst.
…just ran out of time