Sunday, July 25, 2010

XTERRA Wild Horse Creek Triathalon

Distances: long course (1200 yd swim, 16 mi mtn bike, 6 mi run), short course (600 yd swim, 7 mi mtn bike, 3 mi run), long course relay
http://www.bigskytri.com/

Hyalite Canyon was a great venue for an off road triathalon. The short course racers did one loop of each route, while the long course folks did two. The run course was on a fairly technical trail with a number of short steep climbs and descents. Since I'm a mostly lousy mountain biker, I found the bike course more technically challenging than the run course. Course marking was good, but there were a few spots on both the bike and run courses which may have benefited from having a volunteer there as well.

I generally enjoyed this event, but I had two complaints. First there was the problem of some early finishers loitering around the finish line and blocking the start of the run course for racers still coming out of the bike-run transition. Also, a race this long should have food available to finishers. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but a few bagels or some fruit would have been very welcome and all I saw was water and a few abandoned gel packets.

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