Great race, thanks!

[helens...@gmail.com]

Hi Ian and everyone else who put the race on -

Great race again. We were back for 24 hours after having a blast with
8 last year.
The new transition layout is great.
The results team did a great job this year - super fast and they
obviously figured out whatever it was that had caused them trouble
last year.
I thought the Suzuki stage area and sponsor tents gave some energy - I
didn't get to browse the vendors' wares much but I remember their
names and really appreciate their support of this race, too. Nice
touch having shuttle rides in and out of the park.
The bike and run courses were nice - I liked the rolling hills -
enough to make you work and kept things from being too easy.
The support people at each turnaround were great - very energetic,
friendly, and cheering everyone on. Same for the guides at the three
way intersection on the bike, and the policemen who were there all
night - thanks much for that.


I don't expect food - but ice and hot water would be a great bonus - I
think most people could make a meal off of things they can mix with
boiling water. It takes so darn long to boil water on most camp
stoves...I'm not sure what the alternatives for the masses are, but it
would be great.

Ice, too, for cooling during hot times and to ice achy bits. I'd be
happy to pay for it, even, if someone was doing it as a fund raiser or
if there was a vendor. We started off with a cooler full but it was
gone by evening. Because I dropped it. But still.

Our crew person brought up that there were food vendors there last
year selling food - that might be a good way to meet the hungry people
halfway. No one is going to get rich selling junk food to triathletes,
but I'll give them $10 if it keeps my teammates from getting
cranky. ;)

There were two places at night that I think could have used either a
person. lights, or more glowsticks.
The first was the sharp left after the first downhill on the bike
course. The cones at night in a narrow headlight beam are a little
disorienting - add some downhill speed and fuzzy thinking to that and
it was not so great.

The second was on the run course - when it looped around through the
swim approach and up to the TA at the end. The intersecting paths of
cones made it hard to tell where to go, and when you first got to the
end of the sidewalk and had to run down to the beach it was really
hard to tell that's what you needed to do. Most people had run and
biked a lap before dark, but not everyone, so some parts of the course
were hard to decipher in the dark.

Please pass along many, many thanks to all of your support crew,
volunteers, and sponsors. The entire experience - registration, team
changes, getting to the race, and finally doing it, was top-notch and
any suggestions for next year are really just icing on an already
great cake.
Helen
Runnin' Bikin' S'women

[Becky]

Ian,

One more suggestion to help the course at night: a small (2" x 2")
sticker with an arrow placed on every cone. If the cones imply a turn,
then a sideways arrow (--> or <--). If the cone means "don't take this
turn," then an up arrow ( ^ ).

Even after running and biking the courses in daylight, it's amazing
how your mind can misinterpret a pair of cones in the dead of the
night. I think it would help if the highly visible marker (the cone)
could provide more information, rather than be a reminder that you
need to find the chalk/flour marking on the ground.

Becky

On Sep 4, 7:37 pm, "helensterg...@gmail.com" <helensterg...@gmail.com>
wrote: