Today was the start of competition at World Du's, with the paraduathlon taking place immeaditely after the Parade of Nations. We missed the parade, being on completely the other side of Holyrood Park at the time but we'll try and bring you some photos from that when we can find them.
Communication is key at these events, and the schedule for the weekend is prominently displayed all over race-site on these big banners.
Turned up a bit early at race site, but soon enough the Chief Official turned up and we sorted out our roles. We got, perhaps appropriately, the turnaround on the bike course. We rocked off to the turn on the back of a large, comfy Gullwing kitted out in the best black gillett vest the ITU had to offer.
Of course once there, we found our radio didn't work behind the big lump of volcanic rock that is Arthur's Seat and I'm sure we were communicating with TZ by smoke-signals at one point.
Of course, any voluntolding gig isn't complete without manhandling racks and zip-ties and we had our wishes granted as we set up the TA just so.
The TA (as in us, not the thing we were building) now has a huge case of barrier-envy now as these barriers were made of aluminium and really light to portage! We didn't get the upper-body work-out we got at Magog, and to be honest, that's OK by us!
The race itself went without a hitch from our perspective at the back of Arthurs Seat, we didn't even get to use the penalty box! There were only a couple of near-crashes, which considering the turnaround was a tear-drop shaped 180 at the bottom of a gentle incline is a pretty good record!
Here is my oppo for the day, Massie from the BTF and Nicki, one of the voluntolds.
After a quick debrief and going through my lap-audit notes with the Chief Official and TD we were released for the evening, but have another meeting at 21:00 tonight. As we left race-site, the bike course was openned to age-groupers and Elites.
As you can see it was crowded; the draft-busters are going to be busy tomorrow.
A word on that course. It's a toughie. There is ca. 150m of climbing on each lap; the Arthurs Seat loop accounts for over 90m of this. In turn, most of this is accounted for in about 2 kms straight up from TZ. On the other side however, the descent, which is narrow (single lane and twisty) brings you back down the 90m in only 1.3 km. To give you a sense of scale, Cape Smokey rises 200 vertical metres in 2km of road. When we ran it, the grade of the ascent felt more like North. The run course is pretty much 1.25 km up and 1.25 km down, to be done four times in R1 and twice for R2. Make no mistake, this is a hard course.
The general feeling is a TT-specific bike is going to be hinderance; there's nowhere you really need to get aero and they typically don't climb or descend as well as a regular road bike. We reckon a lot of clip-ons are being taken off bikes all over Edinburgh tonight!
Of course, these guys don't know they're born :) When the TA did this course has part of the Hogmany Triathlon in '98, we rode up the descent and down the other side. Apparently, this way around is now considered too dangerous by the BTF.
Anyway, early to bed tonight; TZ opens at 07:00 for a 08:00 start for wave 1 and even if our job (finish line) remain unchanged, we'd be pushing it if we rocked up at 10:00 and said "where's the tape? Consider this sector managed!"
More later
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