A letter from Ironman Boulder Race Director

An open letter from Ironman Boulder Tri Series Race Director Dave Christen, outlining the upcoming race season, a reversion back to age group waves for the swim start at races, revisions to the full IM run course due to flood damage, and more:
Hey Boulder Tri Series Athletes,
Happy New Year! We had a great 2013 and I wanted to share with you some quick thoughts and a couple of announcements for 2014.
SWIM START :
Lessons are hard to learn sometime and we experienced a lot of changes in 2013 that taught us all a lot. We used the Boulder Tri Series to experiment with the rolling start method and the lessons we learned there were very clear. We needed to see how this process worked and for our water safety team to be able to experiment with the changes before we used it in places like CDA and Tahoe. We chose Boulder because we know the athletes here would adjust quickly and would give us a true stream of feedback.
We have decided to return to the wave format for the Boulder Sprint, Boulder Peak, and IRONMAN 70.3 Boulder races. The age group wave start is still safe and with some slight modifications we can still accomplish the same idea. Secondly it returns us to Age group racing which we all can agree suffered a bit in some cases. However, I am considering using an “opt out wave” that will go off last that is self-elected at registration in which an athlete can remove themselves from their AG wave and race in the last wave with other new or nervous athletes. Our goal is to make this sport approachable by all skill levels and we feel this might be a good middle ground. More on this later, but start passing that along to other athletes.
A big thank you to you all for letting us try this out in Boulder and a big thank you to Scott Fliegelman from FastForward Sports in helping get that idea off the ground. He was a critical part of that project and we are grateful for his time and energy.
NEW RACE and NEW SERIES SCHEDULE
I feel like I can speak for us all that we are excited to have our very own IRONMAN in our home town Boulder, the hub of our sport. This event was designed to be an athlete’s race and my goal is to make sure we adjust to the demands of its athletes each year. Our finish line downtown on Pearl Street will truly be special and we hope to pack that place out! Let’s make sure we make that a night to remember for us all!
With the new event we needed to make some changes to our schedule to make room for the new event. Many have asked so here is my response to that. The long and short of it is this event has to fit into the schedules of many groups. The city being one of them. Having this event downtown requires the use of Boulder High School, who has been so gracious to let us use their property. If we do not have the high school there is not room in the city. So Sept or later is not really an option as they have started sessions and are already operating. Amongst many others this was the greatest concern we had to work with. There are dozens more but this was the biggest and I can share the others at another time if people want to know.
Another consideration we needed to dig into was the format of the series. We had 3 weekends that we already use here in Boulder so it made sense for us to keep those but adjust. The 70.3 made the largest move to June from August. We made this decision because to have the 70.3 in July would be to close for people to do both the 70.3 and IRONMAN. This is now the perfect gap between the races with an Olympic race to be used as a final tune up before IRONMAN. The Sprint then needed a new date. It took us time but we found one that worked with the local authorities and feel like we have a good format. In 2015 we will have a full series package including all 4 races but this year we kept the Sprint out until we had a more solid plan. The scoring for the series will remain similar with all 4 races being included but this year we could not offer a series registration package for sale including all 4 races.
IRONMAN BOULDER
As you all know we had some pretty devastating impact on our bike and run course due to the flooding we had in Sept. The bike course at this point looks to be ok and I think we will be able to go with the original announced course. However, a lot can change and we may need to adjust. The run course however will need to change. We are working hard on that now and hope to have an a new course to announce by end of February. It takes time to plan and logistically organize a new route and we need some more time to hammer out the details and make sure we really prepare well.
The overall look and feel of the run course will remain similar. We are not adding any further climbing and we will remain on the footpaths that Boulder has in and around the city. For now plan on the East end of the course going away (the end by 55th Street). We will most likely be extending the southern leg that heads towards CU and towards Foothills Parkway. We also will be most likely extending the course up towards Valmont Bike park.
We are pleased to announce that the finish line will be located on 13th just south of Pearl right alongside the Wells Fargo building. This is going to be such an exciting location for the finish line being at the center of our city. This is going to be a historic event for our city and the finish line being in town will play a large part in that. What a day it will be! This will be the largest IRONMAN event we have ever had and it’s going to be epic.
CLOSING COMMENTS
I hope these details help you plan for 2014, but more importantly I hope these details show you that we are working hard on adjusting to what we think will be good based on your feedback. My inbox is an open door for you all and I hope you know you can reach out whenever you feel like it. I cannot wait to kick off the year at the Boulder Sprint and end the year with a bang at IRONMAN Boulder. If you want to see something unique at Boulder you let me know. These are your races and we intend to keep it that way.
See you out there!
DC
Dave Christen
Dave.christen@ironman.com