I just looked at the Boulder Peak website and found no mention of the speed limit that was imposed in last year's race. All it says is that they were working on a thing or two to reduce speeds on the backside of Old Stage Road. They will probably inform people of these things at the prerace meetings. The race is sold out so I couldn't enter even if I wanted to.

The backside of Old Stage is quite steep and higher than normal speeds are easily obtained. There is a sharp curve near the bottom and in past races there have been accidents there. However, there are about 1600 people who do the race and only 1-2 have accidents each year. IMO, nannyism says that the vast majority of people who have no problem must be penalized so the tiny minority don't get hurt. My guess is the few who do have accidents are not the ones even riding at 50+, but inexperienced bikers who may only be going slightly above 30, but that is outside their ability. Just a guess though as I doubt there are any statistics of any sort.

A couple years ago there was a very serious accident on that section, but it had nothing to do with the curve. I don't remember the detail, but I seem to recall the rider inadvertantly crossed the double yellow center line and ran into a vehicle going up the road. Traffic is closed in the direction of the race, but not in the opposite direction.

In any event these are just my personal opinions. It is a very good race overall - one of the best olys in the country.

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Don
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"Hunter Kemper is the only triathlete to be featured on a Wheaties box, I believe. That was cool that he was there for that race."

I think he lives here - at least when he's not traveling the world competing. The Olympic Training Center is about a mile from the race venue and most of the resident triathlon team competed. A few of the bigger names from Boulder came for the race too, including Cam Widoff who finished 5th.

Just to give an idea of the hilliness of this course, Kemper had the fastest bike split and he averaged a bit less than 25. Then he also layed down the fastest run at 16:31.

The elite guys are amazing. One had a flat about 2 miles from the finish, walked his bike in, ran the 5K and still beat me by 30 seconds.

The race director has a connection with the elites. She has a coaching business and coaches Susan Williams. She is also the last American woman to win the Boston marathon and she also qualified for the Olympic swim team, but didn't get to go because the U.S. boycotted those games.

Pretty cool to have some of the world's best at a small local race!

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Don
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