Tahoe gets bigger, easier
It might seem incongruous that somebody choosing Ironman as his challenge seeks to mitigate that challenge. But that’s the most reasonable take-away from today’s announcement about Ironman Lake Tahoe.
The race undergoes two changes. First, the race day will include an Ironman 70.3. Second, the tortuously steep sections in the Martis Camp part of the bike course, between Truckee and Northstar, has been replaced by a less challenging route. The 70.3 bike course will consist of 1 of these 2 slightly easier 56-mile bike legs.
Just as in St. George, Utah, where location’s Ironman was replaced by a 70.3, the Tahoe event has just proved too hard for a lot of people. Both the Tahoe and Ironman Los Cabos bike courses have been altered, making them easier, because Ironman competitors seem to think the distance is hard enough, no need to make it harder yet. Certain Ironman races have survived and to a degree thrived off their notoriously difficult topographies and weather, Kona obviously but also races like Lanzarote. But if you’re going to fill up 40 or more full Ironman races worldwide, roughly half of them in North America, it seems you can only expect participants to withstand extreme, but not ridiculous, arduousness. (For the purposes of this analysis, ridiculous is more arduous than extreme.)
The Ironman people have been given a wonderful opportunity to showcase their events against a landscape almost unrivaled worldwide. A 70.3 is a do-able event even in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at altitudes of 6000 feet and over. Indeed, if the course is not too hilly it’s easier and faster to ride 56 miles at this elevation than at sea level. Ironman has the use of a course that few other event organizers can match, in terms of beauty while being relatively close to major metro areas and airports. It obviously wants to maximize the gift that is this course.
But in order to do so it’s had to make the race more accessible to more people, including those who aren’t ready for the kind of challenge last year’s inaugural Ironman Lake Tahoe represented. Me, for example. I have not participated in an Ironman or Ironman 70.3 for 15 years. But Ironman 70.3 sounds right in my wheelhouse. This is a course and a race that I don’t know that I can pass up.
Might this mean the last year for Lake Tahoe as a full Ironman, with 2015 and thereafter hosting solely a 70.3 event? I asked Ironman this and they have not yet replied. There is no North American or even European example of both an Ironman and a 70.3 taking place on the same day. Ironman says it’s piloting a motif at Tahoe that has proved popular in the Asia Pacific region. Indeed, this course is well suited for both a 70.3 and Ironman race to take place concurrently, because of the 2-loop bike course, and because Tahoe has enough tourism infrastructure to host 4000 or 5000 athletes swarming the town at one time, should this race weekend become that popular.
General registration for the new 70.3 event will open April 28. Both the full and 70.3 Ironman races will take place on the 21st of September upcoming.
[Late add: the Ironman folks assure us they are committed to the full distance, and it will be run through 2014 and 2015 at a minimum.]
