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May 31, 2005
Zion revisited
Today was an interesting day in Zion. Our first scheduled meeting was not until lunch time so I decided to stay at the hotel and work my way through some emails while Brian went out to work on the bike course. There is never a dull moment in our travels so as luck would have it, a fire broke out in a marsh here at the park. It soon was out of control and the emergency services folks decided to close down access to and from the park. With less than 30 minutes to go until our lunch meeting, Brian was trapped outside the park and I was trapped inside. This is not a small park, about two miles separated us so walking out to meet him with my luggage was not an option. A quick call to the city got us the clearance we needed to escape. When we left town 4 hours later the fire was still raging away. It reminded me of a fire in the marsh between Clermont and Groveland a few years back. All the firefighters could do was stay on dry ground and wait for the fire to get close enough to them so they could put it out.
On Monday we measured out a run course that is going to be awesome. The first half of the 5K loop is in the shaded forest. The second half follows the sand dunes along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Most of the run will be on a gravel-clay path with only a small portion on the pavement. While running the course yesterday we where confronted by a couple of large deer. They didn't even dash away when we ran by them, they just watched us in awe, or was it in disbelief that two old out of shape guys were running in the woods.
The Zion bike course will be somewhat technical because of the numerous turns. The roads are in good shape so it should be a fast course. We are going to stage the race adjacent to the Illinois Beach Resort over looking the lake.
For some strange reason we always seem to attract bad weather during our site visits. Not this time, the weather was perfect. Even Lake Michigan was flat as glass. I hope it acts the same way on race weekend.
We just found out our TriAmerica Zion race is on the same day as the Pleasant Valley Triathlon 20 minutes to the north. We selected our date based on their date last year. This year they moved their date back a week so now we are going head to head. Oh well, the market is certainly big enough to support both races. With the increase in the number of triathlons each year, it makes it tough to find a weekend that is clear of other events in the same market.
Posted by Fred at May 31, 2005 05:21 PM | More in: Tri America, Triathlon
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Comments
Thanks for the update on Zion. Sounds like a fun event. I hope interest grows considering the competition with the other race that day, and with Chicago coming up the following week. Good luck to all ... I have really enjoyed working with you, your staff, and the forums.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Brinkman at July 23, 2005 09:07 AM