I drove the course... Initial thoughts/discussion
Jess and I drove down to Ross Dock yesterday and parked to walk around the transition area and then we drove the course. Here are my initial thoughts, but would like to create a discussion:
Swim: When I originally signed up for IMNYC, I was imagining an IM swim at the speed of the NYC OLY race. That would have put me at around a 45-50 min swim time (compared to 1:12 at IMLou). After reading a lot more about this race and seeing the location, I would guess it will be more like 1:05-1:10 context. This swim is much farther North than where the OLY is held and the river is wider up here, so add this to the tidal chart and the water will basically not be moving all that fast. There will be little to no current when the pro's go off (actually swimming into a slight current at first for them). Over time, it will go slack, then start to to build after about an hour or so. This will be a time-trial start with likely ~30-40 mins or so from the first to the last AG'er to start. Because of this, I will be attempting to get onto the last possible ferry to get out to the barge as late as possible and hopefully be one of the last people in the water. This should hopefully give me a faster swim time by at least 5 mins or so. This will be offset by the annoyance of needing to swim over/past people the whole time and needing to ride from behind on the bike. Part of me wants to be on the first ferry and write-off the 5 mins for the swim and have less clutter in T1 and not have to have traffic on the bike. I would welcome all of your thoughts here. One final thing is that there is a wall made of rock surrounding the entire Ross Dock Park. The only thing I can imagine is that they will have to build either a large set of stairs or some type of scaffolding to get people out of the water and over the wall, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how they do it.
T1: The space looks a little small in general, but I guess they have figured it out. I have to believe it will be very tight in the morning before the race as everyone will be there at the same time after the VERY EARLY ferry ride to get there...
Bike: The road getting into and out of the Transitions from the bike/run is very tight and somewhat steep. There is a cliff face on one side and a 3' high stone wall on the other and the road is wide enough to have 2 car lanes, but barely. The exit out of T1 goes up this and it's reasonably steep so make sure you are in a low gear. With that said it is not nearly as steep as I imagined after reading some of the crap on the internet. It's about the same grade as the ~5 mile climb on the AmZof course, but this one only lasts 0.3 miles so big whoop... You follow more inclines to get out onto the road to approach the Palisades, but again nothing to rediculous crazy. Once on the Palisades, (granted we were driving in a car) Jess and I kept looking at each other and saying "really... this is it...". You basically have 27 miles or so of a long straight road. Zero turns, Zero scenery changes. It's a typical 4 lane divided highway, with a decent amount of trees on both sides. The road is not actually all that wide given that there will be one lane of bikes out and one lane of bikes back. If the bike traffic is heavy, it might be crowded and a little hard to pass (maybe). I have heard the course described as "rolling hills" and I would not describe it that way. I would say it's more like, long (very) gradual uphills followed by long (very) gradual downhills. I would describe "rollers" as shorter and a little steeper so you could carry a lot of your downhill speed and momentum most of the way up the next hill (IMLou seemed like this). I can't imagine that you will carry much speed up at IMNYC since they are so long and not all that steep. With that said, I thought after driving the course that my bike split will actually be better than previously thought. I just can't imagine the course is all that terrible difficult. There are a few spots that the uphills are a little steeper, but nothing that really scared us. The pavement was not "ideal"... It is not blacktop or anything like your local roads. It is highway concrete that didn't appear all that smooth. It is also NJ, so there were a fair amount of potholes that had been patched with blacktop. Going down the last steep hill back into Transition should be crowded as the runners will be coming up the same hill in the other lane. I will be surprised if several jack@sses don't get a little frisky coming down this hill causing a couple of pileups.
T2: same deal as T1, should be crowded, especially the entrance/exit.
Run: Jess and I walked up the 0.3 mile steep road exiting the Transitions. We did it with our 4yr old and 6yr old boys in tow and it took us ~7 minutes. This should be no problem with the adrenaline of the start of the IM run, but you will have ZERO warmup and can burn a run match very early. Might even just powerwalk this as it will likely only cost me a minute at most. at the top of this 0.3 mile section, you make a sharp right turn and do 2 loops of a ~3.5 mile out and back on this skinny little park road. There is a cliff wall on one side and a stone wall on the other. You are surrounded by huge trees the whole time so the good news is this ~14 miles will likely be completely shaded and less hot than the finish of the run. The BAD news is that we were SCARED!!! We kept saying "Are you Freakin' kidding me" It was like 0.8 miles straight up, followed my 0.5 miles down then another uphill, another downhill, another uphill... it was like lather, rinse, repeat. Dangit, I hate running on hills. I might actually try to go run this in the next couple of weeks just to see for sure since it scared me that much. I can't believe this is going to be the first 14 miles of an IM marathon. After you finish this section, it's back out to the main road and up the what looked like 100yr old set of stairs to get onto the north side of the GW Bridge. That's all we could see from the car.
Summary: That's all I have for now. Here's the summary: Swim, not as fantastic as originally thought, but it's a straight shot so very little sighting and should be slightly faster than most IM swims. The bike should be fast and very boring (good for staring at nothing but your bike computer since there's no turns and nothing else to see anyways). The run is well, I hope you're training on hills. This is a strong runner's course which should be good for the little skinny guys/gals (I guess I better lose about 75 more lbs in the next 10 weeks then...)
Thoughts?
Comments
http://members.endurancenation.us/GroupsView/tabid/102/asg/128/showtab/photos/Default.aspx#showtab=photos&asview=asimages¶ms=427
there's one of the Swim Exit (wall we will need to get over somehow), one of the exit hill out of Transition, and 2 random pictures of the bike course. Note, I could have taken a thousand pictures of the bike course and they all would have looked exactly the same.
Anyway, thanks for all of this info and I'm anxious to read what people have to say:-)
I will also soon be putting up a more thorough review of the run course. I ran the first half last thursday morning and now have Garmin files of the different sections. I also took video on my phone of the exit from T1 and the entire length of the out and back (while driving). It's about a 15 min video and I can't seem to find a way to get such a big file off of my Android phone... Stay tuned.
Bottom line, run hills not flats. I think it's about 3,000 feet of elevation change in the first 16 miles of the run.
Okay, I ran the first part of the run course last week and here are my files...
I first started in Transition, ran out and up, then dis the 'out-and'back' 1x (it will be 2x in the race), then I went out of the park and up to the GWB and did the first set of steps (the gate was closed after that).
Here's my Garmin file from this part: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/186684331
Then I drove the course to get different sections. The elevation (according to Garmin) breaks down as the following:
Hill out of T1 (~0.30mi, ~200' gain): http://connect.garmin.com/activity/186684338
Out and back (~7.0mi, ~1,050' gain): http://connect.garmin.com/activity/186684340
After out-and-back up to GWB (~1.35mi, ~300' gain): http://connect.garmin.com/activity/186684342
So by my math and assuming Garmin is pretty close (FWIW, I kept the Elevation Correction Enabled), from the Transition area to the top of the first set of stairs at the GWB, it is 15.9 miles and has 2,657 feet of elevation Gain (and 2,342 feet of elevation loss)
Here's a video I shot of the stairs at mile ~16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PyLt7d33RY
And here's a 17:00 long video I took of the Transition area and of the "out" direction of the 'out-and-back'. I was driving and Evan Odim was taking the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mr4OwkpAlU
Just a thought onthe swim and bike transition.
1. on the swim i think the 5 minutes you gain might be worth it by starting later. worse case it is ofset by the crowd and you are not out anything in time.
2. The bike will be better if you start the swim later as you pass people you will pick up a legal draft. at one point I listened to a podcast from Tri Talk and David Warden and he calculated a lot of benefit from weaving in an out of traffic (coming up behind people and getting a momentary draft while passing them). i also have personally experinced this in 2011 Boise 70.3 when my age group started second to last in a heat start. i blasted the bike way faster than i thought. about 7 minutes as best I can calculate maybe more.
For me the 14 minutes in an IM with a decent chance of aother 5 on the current for the swim is worth the only potenial downsides:
1. swimming though traffic as worse case I am even with the five minutes i gain, and
2. the crowded transition area which if i was at the pointy end of the spear i might reconsider
Wait for the later waves unless you are under 11hrs.
See below for a bunch of questions I sent to the race director and her responses in blue, and a couple of my follow-on notes in red: