Overall the organizers of the Calgary 70.3 deserve congratulations for an amazing race. The course was fantastic, no-one got lost, no-one drown, the sunrise was absolutely spectacular and the spectators along parts of the course were thick and loud!

An inaugural event is always going to have a few hitches along the way. Overall though I think that the organizers of this event were able to get almost everything right on the first try that would have made for significant trouble for some people, their oversights were mostly limited to less important things and made for inconvenience rather than trouble.

• Information – Information was hard to find and relatively late in being posted. Examples: swim start times were posted in different places having different information all the way up to and including race morning. The whole question mark about whether or not we were allowed to have shoes on our bikes was a nightmare, no-one had ever heard of such a rule before and it was impossible to find someone with the correct information. Having nothing on the ground in T1 is appropriate, leave no shoes on the ground in T1, but if they’re on the pedals they cannot be tripped over. Especially with the long run-out like we had across the gravel this makes a big difference. Information regarding the actual distance of the bike course was tough to sleuth out… more on this later. Stating that there would be aid stations every mile and then changing your mind to put them every 2 km isn’t a big problem but just making a decision and sticking with it would have been preferred if you ask me.

• Package Pickup – Occured Downtown at the Westin Hotel. The Westin Hotel hopefully was a significant cash sponsor of the event because forcing all of the athletes to come down to that location caused a ton more grief than it needed to. The organization of the package pickup was streamlined and efficient once we figured out what was going on.
• Bike Drop Off – Worked out well enough for people with cars, I can’t comment on behalf of out of town visitors or Calgary athletes who choose not to drive. Having the bike shop sponsor out at the T1 during bike drop off would have been nice. There was a lot of tool sharing going on in the parking lot amongst athletes who were making adjustments and assembling bikes, having Speed Theory put out a table with some tools to use would be a nice perk. They were there race morning helping out some frazzled athletes but when you’re encouraging everyone to get their bikes into the corral a day early it also makes sense to have them there at that time.
• Toilets – I don’t know how many Porta-Potties you need. The goal of course shouldn’t be to make it so that there is no line because that is probably excessive but the amount of time that some people spent in those line-ups was unreal. The toilets that were associated with T1 were still being used by athletes whose waves had not started once the race was underway, I saw athletes waiting for toilets while their times were running.
• Associated with the above: The volunteers should have been more forceful in not allowing people to use those toilets. This was a theme of the day, the volunteers knew what they were doing and did an excellent job but they were almost too nice about it on occasion. At volunteer orientation it is important to give them a bit of empowerment, tell them that they can give directions and be strict about things when necessary otherwise business minded triathletes can be a bit too greedy.
• Swim Course: Great water, the course was probably over-hyped for potential for being cold, but another year could prove me wrong. Good decision to keep us out of the wide open part of the lake as it kept the waves down. Also nice to swim under the bridge and back, excellent for spectators. Sighting was no problem along the course except for coming back in the last 400m to the finish at the boat ramp. All of the sailboats parked made a nightmare for sighting, when you looked up all you saw were sailboats that all looked the same. Perhaps flying a big flag or banner would help aim us to the finish correctly. The swim start and finish lanes crossed right through eachother. Having everyone jump off the left side of the boat launch into the water there might be a better plan and sending them off behind one of the collections of sailboats directly for the bridge would have resulted in no course overlap and no skull to skull collisions.
• T1 – excellent layout, it meant for a bit longer run than some alternative configurations may have made possible but the short bike rack lengths made sure that no lane was ever too busy at once. I watched lots of people sitting down in the dirt during T1 before I started, I do T1 without ever sitting but for those people that are planning to sit it would have been nice if there were chairs along the fence for them to make use of. Having room on the carpet across the gravel parking lot for athletes to pass one another would have been nice. The single file chute meant that I had to walk for 200m behind a little traffic jam.
• Bike Course – Excellent course, excellent marking, excellent volunteers with directions, excellent suggestions for where people could spectate. My frustration was that by November 2008 I had figured out that this bike course was going to be somewhere between 94 and 96 kilometers but no-where was this ever stated. The website consistently said the bike course would be 90 kilometers and even on race day the announcers kept saying that we had biked 56 miles. Making the course a bit long was necessary and no-one had the right to complain about that, it needed to be that way to accommodate the start location and getting to the park for T2 but it was not necessary to systematically and intentionally give false information about the distance of the bike course. In the results the paces are calculated based on 94 kilometers which I was happy to see but it wouldn’t have killed anyone to start saying that the bike course would be 94 kilometers long 12 months ago. For me this was really frustrating, especially when we got to 90 kilometers on the bike and there was no sign, it was like the organizers just tried to gloss over the problem and tried to fool the athletes as well. Absolutely every single one of them knew afterwards that the bike course was not 90 kilometers so how does it help you to keep that information hidden?
• Bike Aid Stations – Powerade bottles with screw tops wasn’t the best plan. Powerade does make bottle with drinking tops, why not get those? Having the volunteers spaced out over a few hundred yards was nice and gives an opportunity to grab more than one thing which lots of races ignore… well done. Location of Aid #1 was good although a sign prior to the corner would have been nice (or I just missed it). Putting an aid station at the bottom of a downhill (Aid #2) was a poor decision especially considering that there were gradual uphills prior to and after the aid station where it could have been. The speed of the downhill is dangerous. Also, putting cones on the centerline was downright dangerous here. This was made worse by the fact that the volunteers were moving out from the curb of the road to hand things off. Aid stations need to be kept as wide as possible so that people can move around if they don’t need things, athletes will move to the curb if they have to. Putting this on an uphill would probably solve all the problems at once.
• T2. Excellent layout again. Neon spraypaint on the curb that we had to step up would have been nice, less likely to stumble. Volunteers were very helpful with directions.
• Run Course – Excellent layout provided a good place for spectators to see people come past multiple times. Curving chute to the finish wasn’t as nice as a straightaway but I don’t think there are any straight parts of anything in that park so you can’t really solve that. Very challenging especially with the heat.
Run Aid Stations – Recyclable cups was great! Keeping water cold was obviously a problem, but this is important so an effort should be made to do that. Some Aid stations were well spaced out like the bike ones but others were jammed right together. I spent much of my run passing people from previous waves and watched as many of them stopped and looked in the cups the volunteers were holding before grabbing them, obviously they weren’t familiar with shouting what they wanted. Putting signs prior to all aid stations that say “shout what you want” probably would help with congestion and efficiency and less dropped cups of incorrect beverage.
• Finish – Finish line announcer could have used some more information. Giving an opportunity for athletes to submit a few words about themselves is a nice touch at many races and makes the announcer much more enjoyable to listen to for all the spectators as they feel like the athletes become people. I heard lots of people cracking jokes about copying the idea for a belt buckle medal from the marathon in town. I think it’s great, make it a Calgary tradition not just a Calgary marathon tradition. The food selection at the finish was a bit odd, once I had finally cooled myself down with ice from the medical tent I was craving grease so the pizza was fine but that’s a rare occurrence for myself, having something a bit healthier would have been nice.
• Awards – Good work at trying to make the process move quickly, it’s rarely possible to make it efficient but this was rather close. I really liked hearing from the pros, maybe it would have been possible to prompt them with a couple questions. Ask them to describe their day, what they liked about the course and what they found challenging, the spectators might know how things played out but for those of us who are racing we have no clue… but we’re interested!