Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon Bike Choice?
Anyone in the Haus have any experience with Escape from Alcatraz? The organizers are STRONGLY encouraging road bikes versus TT bikes on the course.
The course is in the city of San Fran and as you can imagine its all up, down, left and right. According to the organizers, the course has 14 lefts and 14 rights in 19 miles while going up and down. They are advocating for better bike handling and claim limited sections where you could drop into aero bars. I think he course is crowded and this is likely a safety thing as well.
What say you?
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Comments
"It's a triathlon, use a tri bike!"
If this;
http://www.mapmyride.com/us/san-francisco-ca/escape-from-alcatraz-bike-18-27-miles-route-90428737
is the bike course, it's not as climb-y or steep as many olympic tris around Puget Sound, where we all race on tri bikes. 4 "cat. 5" climbs, average grade 3%...really, you can ride the aerobars up to 6-8% no problem, right? So from a technical standpoint, tri bike should be the call. But if it's essentially a draft legal race, then, different story.
qualified and did it. maybe 2008 ?
beg to differ::: definitely road bike. not safe to do it on a tri bike. some steep and sharp turns. perhaps slap on shorty aero bars. I had several close calls during the race with unexpected turns with crowded course. at one point my bike skidded perpendicular to travel - somehow stayed upright.
During those times, pretty much ONLY the pros and super-duper-elites used tri bikes. I saw two pros spill it on their tri bikes over those years I was there.
Dino, I know you're a super-stud, but I'd ask what your priority is here, to compete or are you just there for the experience?
I won't fault you at all for being there for the experience, it's an amazing course and one that will provide views of SF that 99.9999% of the population of SF will EVER see!
If you're there for fun and experience, use the roadie, all the way. If you're a good descender, you can use the roadie and still be competitive. I found the roads to be very good condition but it's the bay area, in the early morning, there might or might be sunlight, therefore there is moisture on the roads.
The ONLY flat part of the course is the first miles out and the last few miles back, the rest are up and down.
My vote: roadie.
Thanks for all the good feedback. I also got a PM from an EN member with a connection to Pro and the feedback was mixed. The Pro perspective was that he had used a roadie initially do to the technical nature of the course, but in recent years, said Pro moved into a TT frame for this race instead.
My goals here are real simple. I just want to swim from the prison to the marina. I also just want to take my family on a vacation to SF. The race is really just a WKO and a chance to practice my transitions. The next race is IMLP in July and I would like to do it with my skin in tact.
I am an ok bike handler, I guess. But I am sure some will disagree *cough-rich-cough*
Game time decision will be tomorrow AM when I load up the car, but now I am leaning toward roadie.
OK, I hereby withdraw my snarky, uninformed suggestion.