any info for us? how was the course, the town, the weather, the event? worth going?
You bastards put a friggin mountain outside T2!!!
Feedback - Town was great, people were great, volunteers were great.
Changes:
- Don’t have swimmers and runners crossing paths in transition
- Try to straighten out the swim course, especially when swimming INTO the sun
- If it is wet out, try not to have a sharp acute angled turn out of T2 for the run (slipped on the mat and went down)
- Spray chalk the potholes coming into transition, especially a tenth of a mile before dismount when people are trying to get their feet out of their shoes for the dismount
- Beer tent?
- Have 2 waves in the water, one that is about to go off, the other that is next to go off, so we can feel the water and get our suits wet and properly adjusted.
- If we have to walk past the bar for the swim entrance, line up shots!
Hahaa yeah there was a bit of a “climb” right out of T2!!!
I thought it was well worth the trip. Can’t really disagree with any of the other points made above—those are about the “complaints” I would have too----oh and having Subway as the title sponsor meant only their subs as post race food…not a big fan.
I thought it was a really awesome experience. Great town, really great feeling to qualify and be amongst so many great athletes, great course with clean water and rollers on the bike course and a very tough signature hill at the start of the run, and the organization was flawless. I’ve done Alcatraz and M-dots and raced all over and I would say this was one of my favorite race experiences. Well worth trying to qualify for and attending if you do qualify.
Did they announce when next year’s race will be? I would like to try and go back.
Pretty sure the word is the same weekend next year, race would be August 18th. I personally felt there were too many athletes allowed to race, it was fairly congested, esp for bike dropoff. I liked the shirts but the recycled material the are made of sure holds the smell–worse that other tech shirts I have. Probably could have had more buoys marking the swim course too.
I thought the race was great… the venue, the organization, etc. My two issues both relate to the swim:
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Find a way to let swimmers warm up… and I am not talking about splashing around near the start for two minutes. How about letting all swimmers warm up near the swim finish area from, say 6:45 to 7:15, prior to the first wave start? Then everyone can leisurely walk down to the actual start. Not being able to do a few hundred yards of swimming to loosen up and expand the blood vessels is not ideal.
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As mentioned earlier, the swim course needs a few extra sight buoys, especially for that leg heading back into the sun. It was impossible for our wave to see where we were going. I was part of a lead group in 40-44 that went pretty far off course.
Thanks,
David
I’ll echo the comments about the swim. Definitely need more buoys.
And honestly, you may want to check the distance as well. Looking at the top swim splits, everyone seemed to be a full minute to 90 seconds slower than usual.
Otherwise really enjoyed the bike and the run course as well as the town itself, and will be back next year.
great time… … having the highway shut was pretty cool…hope to be back next year
Another positive to add…I thought the webcast of the athlete meeting was a great idea. If you joined the live broadcast, you could submit questions. If you missed it live you could check in anytime and watch/listen at you leisure. Beat having to go to a ‘mandatory’ athlete meeting the night before the race when you are already running around like a headless chicken.
If you’re the type that blows these off no matter what, then you could just ignore it.
Swim was the best water temp/water quality I have ever had for a Tri.
Warmup would have been nice for the swim.
Overall, bike course was challenging - good mix of skills needed.
Run course was off the hook. I’ll gladly go for 5mi of flat/downhill if all I have to wrastle with is a big hill out of T2.
Town was great, local bike shop was very helpful and big enough to stock some bikes worth oogling. Church street was the ticket after the race with all the nice, inexpensive eateries. Cool shops. Cool people. Also, if you can stick around a day or so, Shelbourne farms was quite the site.
Downfall was packet pickup locale. Pretty far away considering the circumstances.
Yeah, packet pickup, especially when it seemed that UVM students were just coming to town for opening weekend.
Church Street was awesome at night. What a cool place to hang out.
Overall great race. That said, it was the only race in my life where I’ve walked up a hill. (Being in 65-69 AG and from Florida - official home of the “Flat Earth Society” - might have had something to do with it though)
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I raced all over the country this year (Galveston, Kansas City, Boulder, Minneapolis, Las Vegas) and found USAT Nationals to be a very well run race. Burlington is a bit tucked away so access wasn’t that easy. Ended up flying into/out of Boston and driving. The host hotel for packet pick-up was too far away from the race venue. I stayed at the Courtyard Marriott right across the street from the race site and loved the convenience as did the wife. I had plenty of time to return to the hotel to drop off my bike pump and other gear that I didn’t want to leave in transition.
It was nice having the opportunity to swim the day before; although, it was adjacent to the actual course. A bit of a longer warm-up would be nice but isn’t critical. I did see that they had HALO swim benches available to athletes. There wasn’t much fanfare/buzz for the start of the race. They needed a longer first swim leg to prevent bottle-necking and more sighting buoys on the leg directly into the sun; thankfully, I didn’t play follow the leader! From a spectator perspective, the last long swim leg into T1 was great.
I thought the bike course could have been a bit more challenging. Coming from Nebraska, I thought I would struggle but I didn’t even use my small chain ring. The road surface was good except for the section through town but it looked like that was being repaved this fall. There was a lot of marshals out on the course, too. No aid stations but not really needed at this distance or in this climate.
The run course was great. The climb out of T2 definitely took the spring out of your step but then was flat to downhill all the way back.
Transition area needed fewer sharp corners and/or astro-turf put down to prevent the slipping.
The finish chute was O.K.; nothing at all like Hy-Vee, which makes you feel like a rock star. The state flags lining the chute was a nice touch.
Burlington as a town has a ton to offer for a city this size. A couple good bike shops, a lot of restaurants and nice grocery stores. The town itself didn’t really come across as “bicycle friendly”. I didn’t see any bike lanes, road surface in town was a bit sketchy and the locals didn’t really want to share the road.
The use of TRI TATS was a nice touch. I wish that WTC would use these for their races, especially at Worlds. It has such a classy look versus the scribble of a sharpie.
I skipped the dinner but did attend the awards (8th in 40-44). Well done and nice looking trophies.
It’s a great way to test yourself against the country’s best but not sure if I’ll go back next year since the timing of the event doesn’t fit well with my other races and kids’ school year.
biggest complaint I had was starting the M18-24 in the second to last wave, especially considering the results show that 6 out of the top 10 came from that wave. The bike course got a little congested at times, and they can always use a few more officials.
It was well run, highly, highly competitive and a lot of fun. Staging for the swim start was a bit cumbersome because of the narrow entry. No real opportunity to warm up (which a number of events, including this past weekend’s IM 70.3 World Championships, share). Hate not getting a swim warm up in.
Sighting on the last leg was tough because into the sun - more buoys and bigger ones would help.
I thought the bike course as it worked its way out of town had a lot of sharp twists and turns that made it tricky. Plus, the road surface in these early sections was rough in spots and there were little holes in the pavement for some kind of metal plates (water valves?) that you had to watch out for. USAT told me that they had a lot of trouble getting the course approved by all the different jurisdictions and that was part of the issue.
Once you got out of town, it was a nice course with some rolling hills. Not a super tough course, but not a pancake either.
Run course was not hard after you got up the first hill.
Assuming I qualify, I will go back next year.
I was up there, but only in support of the Endurance Films team. (First time being at a race and not racing). Anyways, from what the athletes said, it was fun, hilly, and had some challenging sections.
The weather was phenomenal, but I was coming from 90+ degree North Carolina days with 10000% humidity so anything would feel good. Other people complained that it was extremely hot (low 80s by finish time?). To each their own.
The swim seemed like a pain because it had lots of turns, but I think it mixed things up a little bit. You aren’t looking for only 3-4 corners, so sighting became key. There were some rumblings about going off course.
T1 was a zoo. It was extremely compact and narrow. Some of the spectators who didn’t have a clue would run across T1 right in front of the athletes. There were a lot of people at the event. Like some of other posters mentioned about congestion, I bet there was some!
I couldn’t watch any of the bike or run as I was working our booth.
Burlington was awesome. Traffic was tedious a couple times, but nothing major.
The biggest thing we learned, if you bring a pump into transition you will make a lot of friends. Our mechanic barely got out alive.
I’ll echo the points about the swim - going into the sun was brutal, and I went way off course. Having a few more sighting buoys on that second half of the course would be very helpful. Also, having buoys to the left of the turn buoys (say out 50 yards) would help give you an idea when going straight into that sun.
Traffic in Burlington was very congested - it took nearly half an hour to go from packet pick up to transition, less than two miles.
The bike course seemed nice, especially the descent back into town. Same with the run - I’ll trade a step first half mile for a flat/descending rest of the course.
I was also hoping for a bit better post-race food and drinks. That Gatorade crap that they gave us tasted awful and the Subway food wasn’t all that great either. Get somewhere like Whole Foods as a sponsor!
I was sick for the race (sinus infection) and performed pretty miserably compared to my pre-race goals. I’ll probably be back next year.
I’m a local, so maybe a little biased, but I thought this was a phenomenal event. It was extremely well run and organized. I couldn’t be happier to have it in my backyard.
My only complaint was about the lack of swim warmup time. I would have liked a hillier course, but that just a personal preference.
+100 on the swim course comments, but overall I thought this was a great race. (And yes, the bike course was a little dodgy going out of and into town, but the rest of the course was the best road surface I’ve raced on, so no complaints from me.)
R.e. the waves: I’m just curious how the start order is determined. I was pretty late (F40-44), and when I was going out on the bike, there were lead men from the early wave coming in. They had a very different run, temperature-wise, than did folks who started farther back (for instance I think some of the younger men started after me). Obviously the within-AG competition is fair, but for folks concerned with overall placing, it seems like at least switching up the order year to year is a good idea. I would also be in favor of starting the whole thing off 1/2 hour earlier if possible. We got lucky with the weather this year, but if it hadn’t cooled down that week, the 1/2 hour would have been nice for folks out on the (largely unshaded) run course near the end. Never mind the poor folks doing the sprint that started at noon.