Health Net Triathlon Official Website

The "Nitty Gritty" Details (User Opinions)

alan m.
Branford, CT

  (08-20-2009)

"What you need to know:

Swim: The swim is in a river. The river is flat. The swim should be fast.

Bike: You know that part of Hillacious where they cut to Coach Troy and he's climbing up a hill on his bike and puts his thumbs up and says 'Hills !!!' It's like that. All of it.

Run. You start out and end up on nice flats. The other 4.5 miles are all hills.

This is great course if you like hills, and I like hills.

The swim: The swim was long. I'm not a good swimmer, so well, I hate long swims. As a bonus, because it's June and we had a cold spring, the water was pretty cold. Not bad, but cold. If there's one criticism of this race, it's that there is no reason for this swim to be long. It was closer to half-ironman distance than Olympic.

The bike: When do you want to climb ? Hopefully the answer is NOW! Because you have to climb like a goat just to get out of the park and onto the road. You take a right hand turn and then you climb like a goat on Mont Ventoux.

Then there's a descent that borders on scary.

Then you climb.

Then you descend.

Detect a pattern ?

Finally you get on the backside of the reservoir (or some body of water) and it flattens out.

Then you have to climb back up to the entrance to the park. But the bike ends witha screaming downhill.

The run: It starts out flat and on grass, which is good, because you'll need the recovery time.

Just when you are getting your legs under you, you have to start the climbs and descents of the run. This is a nice, tough, fair run. It's two loops, and I didn't know that, because I'm an idiot, so I thought I was getting killed on the first loop by people coming back as I went out.

I honestly think this is a great race and a fair race. It's also a nice little warm-up for Ironman Lake Placid.

Post Race: Great food and awards. I got a watch just for placing in my age group. Overall, they really did a good job with this race and it's a good way to 'start' your season."

Reviewed by a: Repeat Participant for 2009

Gered D.
White River Junction, VT

  (07-16-2009)

"Interesting location. Upriver swim for the first half made things a little challenging but the shorter distance on the bike course (roughly 22 miles) made up for it. A very challenging bike course, in my opinion. The course starts out with a steady climb for the first 15 minutes. No time for warm up at all, just climb climb climb! Then, a nice long downhill that dumps out into a river valley with a ride downstream back towards the starting area. Crossing the river and through town was a little hairy with a detour around the main intersection requiring two sharp 90 degree turns (one over railroad tracks), and then a climb again back towards the starting area. The run course was surprisingly hard. It was an out and back loop, twice, with two pretty big climbs and descents in each direction (8 total for the course!). I was expecting a flat out and back. I would DEFINITELY suggest pre riding and running the course, or at least driving it to get a good feel for what you will be up against! good food afterwards and for the lucky top 3, GIANT CHECKS. Literally. "

Reviewed by a: First Time Participant for 2009

Brett N.
Brookline, MA

  (06-13-2009)

"A very challenging race, but tons of fun!

The swim:
Quite possibly more than 1500m. I usually finish a swim in about 18 minutes, this one took 22:30! Or it could have been that there was a current. The swim course is in a river, and goes with the current along the shoreline and against it in the middle of the river. The current was slow, but I think that slowed things down a lot anyway. (Rivers are faster in the middle and slower on the sides, so we actually swam against a more forceful current upstream than we had working for us when we were swimming downstream.)

The bike:
About three to five miles of climbing right out of the gate. I'd guess it's a steady 5 - 10% grade the whole way up - and it just seems to never end! The course is fast after that point. Lots of rolling hills, but it's largely down hill after the first five miles. VERY smooth roads - only a couple of sections with pot holes. The course is well marked and there's a volunteer at every street along the way to make sure you don't make a wrong turn - I've never seen that before!

The run:
Non-stop hills. If you like running up and down hills - you'll love this course. I'd say you're going up or down for 4.5 miles of the course, and running flats for maybe a mile and a half. Plenty of aid stations as well.

Everything else:
Awesome. I've never seen such a big staff to make the race happen. I felt like there were volunteers everywhere! Plenty of cookies, fruit and water right after the race, and they brought in a ton of subway sandwiches about an hour after I finished. They didn't drag on the awards ceremony either - which seems to happen at a lot of races. All in all, a very well executed race!
"

Reviewed by a: First Time Participant for 2009