PR all the way around: 37min swim, 2:59 bike, 1:59 run, for 5:48 total. For perspective, that finish time in my AG places me solidly MOP (54th percentile), but 72nd percentile OA. M35-39 is a fast AG. I was most pleased with pacing the bike and run both perfectly to sneak in under 3- and 2- hours respectively (:10 seconds under the 3-hour mark on the bike and :19 seconds under the 2-hour mark on the run). Also, this was a 5-year-old previous PR. It was my fifth HIM overall and my first since 2005 and I just wanted to see if I got any faster in the past several years. In terms of the race itself, unfortunately, the venue is bottom-of-the-barrel for an Ironman-branded event.
When people think of racing in Austin, they think of the indoor Convention Center for packet pick-up, expos and transitions; swimming in Town Lake or Lake Travis; cycling through the hill country; and running through UT or down South Congress (look at their banner at the top of the page). Uhm, no. Not so much. Really misleading.
The race HQ is way outside of town at an agricultural fair ground - aka, "a barn." That means it’s all parking lots and barns. The nearest hotel is probably five miles away which means you will be stuck in traffic on race morning trying to get to the fairgrounds with 2,000 other racers and their supporters. There are absolutely no public amenities – restaurants, shopping, anything – within miles for observers to frequent during down-time watching their racer.
Both participant and spectator have to bring coolers and grills and really tailgate to make this event even slightly fan-friendly. My friends reserved a spot (free, I think) under some made-up triathlon team name and they had a spot staked out for them. They brought beer, coolers, music, grills, dogs, anything goes. Lots of people set-up for the day like this:
Pre-race was really bad. You really need a degree in civil engineering to figure out where to go with what and when. Packet pick-up was in the main ag arena and the lines were horrid. You wait in line to pick up your bib and then wait in another line to pick up your schwag. Then you have a very small window of time to drop of both your run gear and bike – but T1 and T2 are about 1 mile apart. You have to drive over from T2 to T1 and T1 is just not made to handle that kind of traffic. As you can see from the images below, T is off of two-lane roads with no parking.
The swim is pretty mundane. It’s in a small hydroelectric plant cooling “pond”. Given the warmer water, there’s an abundance of algae and plant growth on the bottom which you will swim through. And they have a wave start, so if you’re in a later wave, you could easily get in the water 90:00 minutes after the pros start and you’ll be out there all day. And what’s strange is they started closing transition on race morning an hour before some of the waves started. So regardless of what wave you are in you need to get there in the 5 o’clock hour.
The bike is one large loop, which keeps the boredom down, but you are so far outside of town there are zero spectators out there and nothing to look at but fields. Given the wave starts you do however have the chance to pass slower people in waves which started ahead of you and also be passed by stronger cyclists from AGs which started after you. The course is moderate for Texas standards: a few climbs (maybe 100’ ascent in .25 mile), maybe a few rollers, but mostly flat with OK road surface. As you can see, there is an abundance of turning. Not very technical, but if you don't like the direction you are heading, maybe there's some wind of the road surface is bad, you're only on it for a mile or two before you change directions again. All the turns gave me ample opportunity to count how many cyclists wearing compression hose and silly aero helmets went into right-angle turns with their inside pedal down.
When you finish the bike, this is what awaits you: 2,500 bags of shoes. T1 and T2 are not in the same place so you show up to T2 and hope you remember where you left your shoes:
The run is promoted as three “loops”, but it’s more of an out-and-back. One nice thing is that spectators can set-up some good viewing since there’s really nothing out there but fields all along the run course. If you see open grass, take it. Overall, it’s an OK race. They could majorly improve it if they moved it downtown to Town Lake and the Convention Center. It would take a lot to pull this off, but Austin already has a 26.2 mile marathon course. Double that (plus a bit) and you have the bike; use the Austin marathon’s half course for the run; swim in Town Lake.
The finish area is inside the arena, so that's nice. But no A/C and losts of stairs to navigate after the race:
Race Day Wheelshttp://www.racedaywheels.com/I touted the concept of renting wheels well before I actually rented any. For Ironman Longhorn I rented a Zipp disk and 1080 and received them more than a week before the race so I had time to “try them out” and get the shifting lined-up. They come with high-quality tires, tubes, and valve extenders. They do NOT come with a cassette or skewers or a disc wheel inflator adaptor thingy. So, if you don’t have a chain whip and cassette lock ring removal tool, you’ll need those too.
Overall, I couldn’t be happier. I rented $3,000 wheels for about $200. Returning them was simple too. They came in a custom-fabricated corrugated plastic box (environmentally-friendly, re-usable) with a wheel bag for the disc. The owner e-mailed me a pre-addressed FedEx return shipping label for $25, which was $6 cheaper than what my local FedEx/Kinko's Office was going to charge me. For all future long course tris, I know where I’m going for wheels. I can’t see why anyone would buy super high-end carbon wheels. Let someone else absorb the high costs of ownership. You’d have to race on them at least a dozen times to make it worth it (I race once per year, so it would be a bone-head move to buy). Plus, you’re stuck with that year’s technology.
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