Liberty Half Iron (Minnesota)
I'm doing the Liberty half iron this weekend. It's been a pretty low key training summer for me so far, though I'm in shape. :-)
Anyway, I wonder if anyone has any tips on the race in general... and secondly if anyone knows about bottle exchanges on the bike. I've been able to find that there are run water stops roughly every mile as you'd expect, but the race is co-run with an Olympic race on the same course at the same time (where there are often no bottle exchanges) and I can't find information about bottle exchanges on their site.
Thanks!
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I know nothing about this race, but I just signed up for it today! It's actually ~15-20 mins north-west of my house. I don't know if you live close enough to drive to the race the day of... But Jess and I would love it if you came and stayed with us the night before! I put it on the Dashboard today that I was doing the race and Lindsay Blumenshein mentioned that she's doing it as well. Maybe she'll chime in with actual answers to your race questions if she has done it before.
See you this weekend!
--JW
Pretty cool that there's going to be some EN mojo out there on the course!
"The bottle exchanges are at mile 10, 24, and 43. Water, Heed, and Hammer gel are available at all exchanges. Hope you have a great race this weekend!"
JW - thanks much for the invitation. I have this whole sort of "lone wolf" pre-race vibe going just out of habit, and I feel more comfortable just keeping that up. I'd love to meet for dinner or something however. I'm going to drive up Friday afternoon. Cell number is 515-451-4711. Text or something and we can make some arrangements to get together. I'm going to check in and drive the course, but no other major obligations.
The swim was very calm. According to the directors, the water is sheltered from weather and is usually smooth as promised. Water temp was just under 70 degrees. There were enough bodies in the waves to have a group, but they were small enough that there was none of the typical IM body slamming that I was aware of.
There have been weather issues in the past, but that is the midwest in June. For 2015, the temp was nearly ideal, and it was overcast. There was some rain in the morning, but it wasn't bad, and it did not get super-hot.
The venue is very low-key and the people running it were very friendly. However, there were very few volunteers, relative to some races. Typically, there was one person at a corner, maybe 2. The bike bottle exchanges maybe had 3. Because of the small scale of the race, this was adequate, but you did have to keep your head about you and you couldn't count on 100 people shouting at you to slow down and turn left. You should expect to potentially feel like you are solo-biking or solo-running at times. Also, there is a part of the bike course that is a loop that you have to do twice. The volunteer was giving ambiguously worded instructions, and a reasonable number of people misinterpreted him....either skipping the second 18 mile loop or going down towards the finish for a little while before figuring out that they had gone the wrong way. This would be a very fixable problem for them...they just need better signage and a better, very specific wording by the volunteers...but it's representative of what can happen if you aren't being alert at a small scale race.
The run course is very challenging, but very fair. It's a simple out and back. There are no monster hills, but it is quite frequently up and down on an otherwise nice trail with a few steepish (short) segments.
The race hotel was very reasonably priced (around $105/night) for being suites, not little tiny rooms. They also had breakfast out early for the racers. I was able to get up as late as 5:00 am and get to the race with plenty of time and no rush at all.
I would do this race again any time, particularly if I were looking for a "B race" and wanted to keep expenses reasonable.