Agree with this. I raced the olympic distance on Saturday. Transition closed at 7am, but my swim start wave wasn’t until 9am, so I had 2h to kill. I walked back to my hotel and rested for a bit, then walked back.
To get from bag check (to drop off my shoes) to swim start, you had to cross over the course 2 times! Both crossings were slow and congested since athletes were on course. I barely made it to the start line in time and was rather panicked. (side grumble – they were launching some waves earlier than published in the guide, wtf?). Felt like pretty poor site layout.
Same thing happened to me, except because of how long it took to get around bike out, I did miss my swim start.
I fir one truly hope these AC rumors aren’t true.
As someone who has lived in jersey my whole life and raced in AC, there us absolutely nothing good about it as a race location.
The city is a dump with drunks and homeless everywhere. The race courses that have been used are absolutely atrocious with terrible roads.
It seems with the highest attendance figures in the history of the event, USAT would want to keep it in Milwaukee ???
was this go around with MKE bc they couldn’t find a venue or didn’t have a suitable venue apply to host?
FWIW having raced or spectated races in 7 -10 countries on 3 different continents MKE is among the better venues I’ve ever been to when you think about course, hotels, restaurants, stuff for non racers to do etc
You also don’t want to wear out your welcome with the locals(see Kona).
If you do the same event in the same location every year it’s easy to forget what it’s like to not have the event. If the financial impact of having Nationals in the city is as great as claimed then taking a year or two away should show the value of the event to locals.
That in turn helps encourage them to have a stake in wanting the event to return while mitigating some of the pain over the inconvenience of the events footprint.
I definitely understand what you’re saying. It was a very busy weekend in MKE with USAT, Brewers in town and the Drake concert but all the locals that I interacted with seemed very pleased to have the race there. Hopefully, if AC is the venue it will be a one & done. I know my wife has already stated that she’s a hard pass on AC.
Most of the time it’s a 2 year contract with the cities. I think one of the issues is that frankly, cities have to want to host these events (IE pay to host it). World triathlon is running into that issue next year on the WTCS circuit. They normally have 6-7 host cities and only 1 city (host of Grand Final) is currently scheduled to host. USAT has been fortunate to have a good relationship with MKE and so they’ve been able to come back each time and build on a solid event.
ETA: I also think at some point you’ll have to move it around just so the city and athletes don’t get bored of the same venue. I would think 3-4 year contract would be the longest, and 2 years about the minimum (anything less is likely too much work for USAT to always have to do the leg work to get cities interested).
Agree with this. I raced the olympic distance on Saturday. Transition closed at 7am, but my swim start wave wasn’t until 9am, so I had 2h to kill. I walked back to my hotel and rested for a bit, then walked back.
This does take a lot of fun out of the event. Who wants to check in and then wait 2 hours.
Setup bike, jump on $0.30/ minute scooter. Ride 3-7 minutes back to hotel, take a nap, shower, snack, toilet, relax, then head back out on the scooter. I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, given that my hotel was <10min walk from transition, I didn’t mind the time gap too much. Kind of nice to have my own food/toilet/bed/calm area instead of the standard experience of stress-queuing for a porta-potty, afraid that I’ll miss swim start, then rushing to get my wetsuit on. Might have felt differently if my lodging was further away and I had to sit around at transition that long.
Agree with this. I raced the olympic distance on Saturday. Transition closed at 7am, but my swim start wave wasn’t until 9am, so I had 2h to kill. I walked back to my hotel and rested for a bit, then walked back.
To get from bag check (to drop off my shoes) to swim start, you had to cross over the course 2 times! Both crossings were slow and congested since athletes were on course. I barely made it to the start line in time and was rather panicked. (side grumble – they were launching some waves earlier than published in the guide, wtf?). Felt like pretty poor site layout.
Same thing happened to me, except because of how long it took to get around bike out, I did miss my swim start.
Oof, sorry to hear that. How did that play out with respect to your timing chip? I assume they just set the start time for each age group as the time they launched that AG’s swim wave. If you went out with a later wave, did they correctly adjust your start time?
Oof, sorry to hear that. How did that play out with respect to your timing chip? I assume they just set the start time for each age group as the time they launched that AG’s swim wave. If you went out with a later wave, did they correctly adjust your start time?
I got to the dock maybe 2’ after the AG group started. The next wave hadn’t yet gone. I was told I was allowed to jump in and start swimming, but my time started when the groups time started.
I still didn’t have my wetsuit fully pulled up (I do that last before jumping in the water). So I scrambled to get everything on and start swimming. Cap wasn’t even on properly.
I caught the back of the group by the bridge and still was in the top half of swimmer by the swim exit. I just don’t know how much time elapsed between group start and my start - so I know my official time, but I don’t know how long it truly took me (90" faster? 100" faster? 120" faster).
It seems like based on weekend date (sept) that it’s basically replacing it. Did people earlier say this is the last year of the current contract for AC 70.3?
The announcement will be made after AC 70.3 is over. It works out well for the Race Director who handles AC70.3 as USAT will have a contract for 3 years.
My buddy did TriAC today which is an oly distance. Here was the bike course. Gotta imagine this will be similar to the AGNC next year. Its basically the IMAC70.3 course without the lollypop on the NW end
😕 I try to see the best in every host city/venue but if that ends up being the AGNC venue, wow that is a huge downgrade from MKE. Just looking at Google street view near Bader Field - the swim launch and transition area is depressing. I guess the run is cool but not sure that makes up for the main area.