B2B Course Sneak Peak

Saturday Donna and I went to Wilmington to check out the B2B bike course. We figured it would help our nerves to ride at least some of it and it DID! Here's a little bit of what we scoped out:

This is a view of the Hilton (where we're staying and where I think a lot of athletes are staying) as seen from the parking lot of the battleship (i.e. the bike FINISH and the run start/finish.) The battleship is to the left of the telephone pole and to get to the hotel (which we will run by - twice - miles 3 and 10- I think) you run to the left, up over a bridge and curve around into town. Very picturesque. But on to what we learned about the bike course for the half iron distance.

We rode our bikes from the finish up to the turn around and then back to the finish. Pretty much what you see on the left side of this map. (The reason we didn't just start at the start and finish at the finish is because that 12-ish mile section in the center labeled I-140? Yeah - it's not bikeable except on race day.) The course was f-l-a-t except for a couple of bridges - the worst of which will actually give us a nice little downhill into the finish (and a not super fun slight uphill for the start of the run.) I don't know what the weather patterns are usually like - but we had a crosswind coming from our left on the way out/up - which means that had we been able to ride the I-140 portion we would have had the wind in our face for those 12 miles. We did have a slight map fail which we only realized when we got here:

I asked D, "Is THIS the turnaround?" Surely the race director didn't plan part of the course on a dirt road. They didn't and no, it's not the turnaround. We turned left when we should have turned right a little further up. Ooops. My bad. I should not be entrusted with navigating apparently.
The real turnaround looks like this. Note the clouds? There was a front moving in on us. There wasn't much traffic (after the turn onto Blueberry Rd that is - there was some near the I-140) but there was a lot of this:
Pastoral loveliness. (Just out of range to the left is a big black cow. Had to take this picture of the critters for RBR. Also not pictured are the two snakes we saw. Eeek! My sincere hope for race day is that all y'all speedy bikers will scare those suckers into hiding LONG before I show up on the scene.) Ahem. Continuing on...

There really wasn't a lot else to take pictures of. With our detour we ended up biking 43 miles at a pace slightly faster than our "race pace". Yay. We drove into Wilmington to check out the hotel (lovely - with a view of the river) and to scope out the run course (charming but I probably won't be in a position to appreciate the cobbled streets or dappled shade as much on race day as I did on Saturday.) There were lots of interesting little pubs, ice cream shops, unique stores, cafes, etc in historic, downtown Wilmington. It's a cool place for your support crew to hang out. Not a lot of chain restaurants that we saw - but then we drove over to check out the first section of the bike course and we noticed things like Moe's, Macaroni Grill, and On the Border over by Wrightsville Beach (out Military Cutoff Rd.) If you're trying to plan night before food - that's the direction to head I think. We were in the car checking out the rest of the bike course but it still looked flat! The section on I-140 is raised (i.e. somewhat more exposed to the weather) and has a few long rises/declines but it looked like new and very smooth pavement. The start of the bike course is sort of twisty, turny because they have to get you around and cloverleafed up onto the road but it made sense as we drove it. Around mile 5 we did see this wackiness:
Do you see the adirondack chairs for scale? The flamingo stands about seven feet tall! It totally cracked us up.

We also tried to check out the swim course. It's very hard to tell exactly where the swim will start because (for the half) it starts somewhere in the middle of a road that fronts about 50 private piers. There doesn't look (to my completely inexperienced eyes) like there's a natural place for a mass swim start. This was the largest "opening" to the waterway I saw:

Can you read the sign? Here. Let me zoom in a bit for you (should be clickable):

Yeah. I'm hoping that's NOT the swim start. The swim finish was also a little perplexing. We saw where the transition area is going to be but couldn't find a great place for an exit from the water. It's probably at or right next to a Yacht Club that we could only get so close to. I'm not excited about getting out of the water and having to run across lots of pavement - including a big road (which I hope they'll have closed to traffic). Do you think they'll let us slip on some shoes or am I showing (yet again) my utter weeniness? The good news on the swim is that even with a storm front moving in and the wind picking up, the water seemed very flat and calm. I'm going to have to trust smart people like Nancy Toby who know how to check charts about currents and tides when they say that we'll have all that going for us. Downhill swim - yay!

To sum up: the whole day was a fantastic experience. The ride boosted my confidence and seeing the course calmed my nerves. I'm sorry we didn't have the full iron course map with us to go check it out more for y'all - but there were lots of long, straight, flat sections on the parts we did see. It is not a technical course. It's perfect for getting down into aero and spinnning like fools. (<--Not having aero bars myself, I'm mostly inferring here. You'll have to tell me after the race if I was totally off base!) Do any of my fellow B2B peeps know if there's a blogger meet up scheduled - like for Sunday breakfast or anything?
Anyway - I think I've hit a good point where I'm almost as excited about this race as I am scared. That and I'm ready for the off season. I hadn't realized how long a haul it would be training for a November race! Peace.

TODAY I LOVE: knowing the virus I have is not the flu (small favors and all)