I haven’t heard much talk about T100’s age group experience so I thought I’d weigh in after racing Las Vegas. For starters as comparison I’ve never race a full distance Ironman, but I have competed and attended a handful of 70.3 Ironman events and I race a ton of local events.
In general I was throughly impressed with how well ran and organized the age group side of things went. I had kind of assumed because they’re new-ish at it and this is a brand new venue there was going to be hiccups but honestly there was almost none. To me it had a very boutique feel to it. I think The smaller field sizes allow them to focus on making it feel special and taking care of the athletes. I could write more but in general I would do another one of there events in a heart beat.
Was the course the same as for the pros?
E.g. 6 laps of the same 3k loop with tons of elevation
If so, that sounds like it would get congested real quick.
The AG bike course had an added climb onto it, so we only did 4 laps. It never felt overly congested. The run course only shared the main climb where Geens made the pass for the lead, but at the top we turned left and the pros went right and had a totally different course that was 3 laps.
I had a friend who raced who seemed to also have a great experience. I can speak to the venue having done 2 of the 70.3 Worlds events held in Henderson and Lake Las Vegas. It’s a great location for a race. I heard on the PTO podcast today Sam was discussing the event and hinted they would really like to try and use the Lake Meade recreation area for the bike course like Ironman did. That would really be great, it’s spectacular back in there.
I had a great experience all told. The course was tough, but fair. The bike got a little congested but never had any real issues. I would have liked a 2nd aid station on the bike but it was adequate since it was a cool day, had it been 90+ I’m sure it would have been a lot tougher as a whole.
The race was well organized, it was a lot of fun to be able to watch the pros the day before and have some of them out cheering on Sunday.
All told, I feel like it was money well spent and will happily reccomend it to friends going forward!
Different course to the pros…that’s a bit of a landmark divergence from the rest of triathlon isn’t it?
I did the event, flew down from Seattle. I did the 2k swim on Saturday and the Triathlon on Sunday. It was fun weekend. I’m not a climber so found the course brutal, for both the bike and run. My wife and I enjoyed watching the Pros on Saturday.
Tradition tri course aren’t do 4-6 laps either. The pro course was shorter and would have gotten too congested with the AG race.
I suspect that’s for ease of logistics. If you only have a few cameras it’s easier to reposition them when you only have a few kms of real estate to cover.
Most or all World Triathlon events are like this. The professionals race on course suited for televised draft-legal racing. Amateurs race on a course suited for mass participation non-draft racing.
I’ll make a shameless plug for the video I did covering my T100 experience. It really was a great event. Hopefullt it stays around for a while. https://youtu.be/Fj8zXOyEV9Y?si=neN8w4deHwHHeKoS
Hi, replying to thread generally. 30 years experience racing all distances. Overall comment would definitely do this race again. Tough bike and run with significant elevation. Noting the run on golf cart track for the most part had almost zero flat sections and steep swift elevation changes, much more so than usual tri run courses.Did not feel overcrowded on either run or bike, others may have had different experiences. Single loop swim had some light chop and potential there with any significant wind for that to get worse quickly. Areas for improvement - swim - white corner sighting buoys hard to spot. Return buoys would have helped a different colour from outbound. Bike - not so much competitor experience but layout seemed to dramatically interfere with traffic in one area pretty much stranding some drivers for what appeared to be hours. Run - aid stations were differentially supplied, would have been nice to have cola at all especially last time around, also porta-loos at all run aid stations, there were only some at swim start which you ran by. Finish line crowd and awards ceremony generally seemed to lack atmosphere (again a perspective call).
Different pros handing out finisher medals all day was an excellent touch.
I pretty agree with everything you said. The traffic issue honestly made me nervous someone was going to fed up with waiting and jump onto the course. I was a bit surprised with how subdued the atmosphere was at the finish also. I was so spent at the finish had no clue that I walked right by Marc Dubrick until I saw a video on me finishing 
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Experienced age grouper here. I loved the race and hope to do it again. My only issue was not with the race but with more than a few of the athletes on the course who were being unsafe with their riding. Several people were riding side by side and blocking faster riders from behind. It was extremely annoying and sometimes unsafe. This happens at every race, but was markedly exacerbated by having that many athletes packed onto a 12 mile biking loop. A few people passed me on some of the steep downhills right before and even into the traffic turnabouts. That is against the rules and put them and me in danger. Of course, I passed them right back because they were not actually strong cyclists. It seems to me that with the explosion of indoor training some people don’t actually know how to ride bikes outside when other people are around them.