2014 Xterra Key Biscayne
We arrived in Key Biscayne on Saturday and checked into our hotel (Silver Sands). It was super budget for the area ($169/night), but it was a great location and worked well for us. Before riding the course, we checked in at the bike store and this was when the unorganization started. There was no rhyme or reason to how they were helping people and it took forever to get our race packets. It would have been ok if there were a lot of people in the store, but there were only 4 of us. Once that was done, we headed to check out the bike course.
The course was not marked yet so we just rode most of the trails to get the feel for them. It was fun and I'm glad we got to check them out to adjust tire pressure and get use to the turns.
The morning of the race, they were setting up the buoys as we were heading over to the swim start. They said it was wetsuit legal, but I didn't feel like the water was cold enough so I didn't wear one. There was a little current in the opposite direction of our swim which was fine with me since I'm a good swimmer and wanted a head start on the bike. I came out of the water in 11th place so I didn't have too many people to get in my way on the bike.
The bike was well marked and it was a two loop course. The first loop was great since not many people were in front of me so I didn't have anyone to wait on. The second loop was a little harder since a lot of the slower riders were on the trail, but most of the people were very nice about getting over to the side so I could pass. I thought I did pretty well on the technical aspects of the trail, but I could spend more time climbing hills since I lost time there. I had the third fastest bike time so with some hill training, maybe I can get first.
The run was fun! A lot of people said they got lost, but I thought it was marked well and never made a wrong turn. Shortly into the run, you had to cross waist deep water so your shoes were wet almost the entire way. There was not much elevation gain and loss, but there was a lot of beach running. Towards the end we had to swim across a 'river' with our shoes on. It felt like you had weights on your feet and the current was pretty strong, but it was pretty fun!
I finished 5th overall and 2nd in my age group. Being my first Xterra, I was pretty happy with these results...
Swim: 13:59
T1: :50
Bike: 50:20
T2: :32
Run: 30:00
Total: 1:35:41
Now for all the bad...
They said the awards would be at 11 and I finished early so I decided to go shower at the hotel. I got back to the finish at 10 and they were about done with the awards so we missed them. When we tried to get back into the park, the person at the front gate told us we were not allowed to enter. They were super rude and pretended to not speak English at first, but later we found out there did. The attendant in the morning said we could come back into the park at any time if we had our receipt, but the person working later was not letting us, telling us the park was too full. After lots of arguing, they finally let us in. This is reason enough to never visit this park. When I had visited the park a few weeks earlier to ride the course, the attendant was also very rude.
There was also no post race BBQ like the website mentioned. People were still on the course and they had torn down the finish line so I felt bad for them. I hope next year they can wait till the posted times and wait for more people to finish the race.
Overall, it was a great weekend and we had lots of fun.
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The course was not marked yet so we just rode most of the trails to get the feel for them. It was fun and I'm glad we got to check them out to adjust tire pressure and get use to the turns.
The morning of the race, they were setting up the buoys as we were heading over to the swim start. They said it was wetsuit legal, but I didn't feel like the water was cold enough so I didn't wear one. There was a little current in the opposite direction of our swim which was fine with me since I'm a good swimmer and wanted a head start on the bike. I came out of the water in 11th place so I didn't have too many people to get in my way on the bike.
The bike was well marked and it was a two loop course. The first loop was great since not many people were in front of me so I didn't have anyone to wait on. The second loop was a little harder since a lot of the slower riders were on the trail, but most of the people were very nice about getting over to the side so I could pass. I thought I did pretty well on the technical aspects of the trail, but I could spend more time climbing hills since I lost time there. I had the third fastest bike time so with some hill training, maybe I can get first.
The run was fun! A lot of people said they got lost, but I thought it was marked well and never made a wrong turn. Shortly into the run, you had to cross waist deep water so your shoes were wet almost the entire way. There was not much elevation gain and loss, but there was a lot of beach running. Towards the end we had to swim across a 'river' with our shoes on. It felt like you had weights on your feet and the current was pretty strong, but it was pretty fun!
I finished 5th overall and 2nd in my age group. Being my first Xterra, I was pretty happy with these results...
Swim: 13:59
T1: :50
Bike: 50:20
T2: :32
Run: 30:00
Total: 1:35:41
Now for all the bad...
They said the awards would be at 11 and I finished early so I decided to go shower at the hotel. I got back to the finish at 10 and they were about done with the awards so we missed them. When we tried to get back into the park, the person at the front gate told us we were not allowed to enter. They were super rude and pretended to not speak English at first, but later we found out there did. The attendant in the morning said we could come back into the park at any time if we had our receipt, but the person working later was not letting us, telling us the park was too full. After lots of arguing, they finally let us in. This is reason enough to never visit this park. When I had visited the park a few weeks earlier to ride the course, the attendant was also very rude.
There was also no post race BBQ like the website mentioned. People were still on the course and they had torn down the finish line so I felt bad for them. I hope next year they can wait till the posted times and wait for more people to finish the race.
Overall, it was a great weekend and we had lots of fun.
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