I'm not racing tomorrow after all.
Very unimpressed.
The tickboxes for
the race were being able to have a good crack at going quickly and have a
go a beating last year's time, while managing risk on the bike leg.
Not sure I can tick either box after an incident on Friday on the course
where a bus went under the main pedestrian bridge from the outer palace
grounds into the main athlete transition area, that was
over-height and damaged the bridge. It's the only route through to
transition from outside the race and is unusable.
So the race director
has implemented a marshalled mandatory dismount zone on part of the bike
course where the bridge crosses the bike course and
pedestrians/spectators need to cross the bike course. All athletes have
to slow down, stop, get off their bikes, walk 10m, get back on and
carry on around the bike route... 3 times each in the race. I've seen
race footage and it looks bloody awful. At any given time there could
be a good 400 athletes on the bike loop which is about 6.6km long and as
the race is started in waves there are cyclists on the course who are
on any of the 3 laps... so at any time at the dismount or re-mount line
there are 10-15 cyclists in the least stable state of getting
on/off/tottering about in cycling shoes. That, plus the fact that the
race attracts a high proportion of first-timers there's a good 75% of
the field have never raced before or have certainly never raced where
there are a lot of other athletes in close proximity. I'm not sure what
other option the race director had, but there are going to be a lot of
athletes turning up to today's and tomorrow's race waves who won't know
until they get to the swim briefing. There's going to be a lot of cross
people and perhaps offering to allow people to withdraw and get at
least a partial refund would have been a good gesture.
Basically, sod that. I'm not having someone ride up my
backside or stop/wobble/fall off right in front of me and cause me to
crash; it's bad enough having that risk at the start and end of the bike
leg, but adding in 6 instances of it during the race? Also, slowing
down, stopping, getting off, walking, getting back on and then starting
up again on one of the quicker parts of the bike course not once, or
twice, but three times during the race will add up to minutes to the
overall race time. Where personal best times are often measured in
parts of minutes, that's just no fun any more. Most people aren't
racing the rest of the field, they're racing themselves. I'd've been
doing both.Someone has taken short videos of the area from today's racing...
Dismount:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-89QyxUB48&feature=youtu.be
Remount:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8u8OR3dGjg&feature=youtu.be
