The Herbalife24 Los Angeles Triathlon was a real mixed bag of good and bad. The Olympic and Sprint both start off in Venice Beach for the swim. The bike leg … MORE
The Herbalife24 Los Angeles Triathlon was a real mixed bag of good and bad. The Olympic and Sprint both start off in Venice Beach for the swim. The bike leg then takes you into downtown LA and to Korea Town (Olympic only), and then the run is a two loop course from LA live to McArthur park.
Starting off, the expo and goodie bag at bib pickup were pretty great. Some of the best race swag I’ve ever received. Long socks, shirt, bottle, backpack, headband, ice pack, a few creams and lotions, etc. I was feeling really good about the race, as everything looked very polished.
First sign of trouble I found was that the time T1 would open up in Venice Beach. Info was inconsistent and all we knew is that it would open up sometime between 4:30 am and 5:30 am and close sometime between 5:30 am and 6:30 am. It ended up opening around 5 am and closing at 6:30 am.
The swim went mostly well. The views were awesome. Seeing the sun rise over the Venice pier was a great sight. It was concerning that the swim buoys were still being put up with less than 5 minutes to race start and the I believe the course might have been a bit long. After swimming, we were to place our wetsuit and wet items into these “T1” bags that would be transported to the finish line (more on this later).
The bike course heads east mostly on Venice Blvd to LA Live, up Figueroa to Sunset, turns around and then west on Wilshire to Western and back to LA Live. The course was very wide on Venice Blvd. Some areas had pretty bad cracks and pot holes, but there was so much space, it was fine. Once we got onto Figueroa, the course got very narrow. This was being used for both bike out and back legs and for run out and back. There were sections with pedestrians just walking across and the police did a poor job stopping people at places. Once, we got onto Wilshire, the road was horrible. I honestly think it’s somewhat unacceptable how bad the road conditions were. Potholes and crack everywhere. I sincerely hope the organizers rethink these conditions because it was very unsafe and I had to really slow down to avoid dying. Overall, the course had some cool views, but like I said, the main thing that stuck out was how unsafe it felt in the last half.
The run is two loops down Figueroa and Wilshire to Griffith. The road is still bad of course, but much more manageable on foot. This section is why I’d give it a 3/5 on difficulty. You gain a little over 400 ft in the 6.2 miles. The gradient up Wilshire hits 7% and is a bit challenging on tired legs. Views are great though.
After running to the finish line I was handed a medal, banana, protein bar, water, and a herbalife24 branded towel. The finish line festival was pretty cool.. it is LA Live after all. They were also giving out Herbalife24 shakes in shaker bottles. While I am not a fan of this company, I must admit the shakes were very tasty.
Now, it was time to pick up our gear. This was kind of a mess. The volunteers ripped off my bike # when racking my bike so I had trouble finding it. Then after going around and collecting all the different gear bags, we were informed that the T1 bags had not arrived and it would still take 30 minutes for them to get there. When they finally arrived, there was a massive human traffic jam and it turns out the bags were not very well organized. The volunteers had trouble finding our bags.
Overall, I wouldn’t do this triathlon again unless they changed the bike course. There was more good than bad, but damn those roads were terrible. This one is definitely on the more expensive side and while riding through K-town is cool, I think it would be better to have safer roads. Perhaps take the bike course south towards USC and keep Wilshire for the run.
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Mixed Bag
The Herbalife24 Los Angeles Triathlon was a real mixed bag of good and bad. The Olympic and Sprint both start off in Venice Beach for the swim. The bike leg … MORE
The Herbalife24 Los Angeles Triathlon was a real mixed bag of good and bad. The Olympic and Sprint both start off in Venice Beach for the swim. The bike leg then takes you into downtown LA and to Korea Town (Olympic only), and then the run is a two loop course from LA live to McArthur park.
Starting off, the expo and goodie bag at bib pickup were pretty great. Some of the best race swag I’ve ever received. Long socks, shirt, bottle, backpack, headband, ice pack, a few creams and lotions, etc. I was feeling really good about the race, as everything looked very polished.
First sign of trouble I found was that the time T1 would open up in Venice Beach. Info was inconsistent and all we knew is that it would open up sometime between 4:30 am and 5:30 am and close sometime between 5:30 am and 6:30 am. It ended up opening around 5 am and closing at 6:30 am.
The swim went mostly well. The views were awesome. Seeing the sun rise over the Venice pier was a great sight. It was concerning that the swim buoys were still being put up with less than 5 minutes to race start and the I believe the course might have been a bit long. After swimming, we were to place our wetsuit and wet items into these “T1” bags that would be transported to the finish line (more on this later).
The bike course heads east mostly on Venice Blvd to LA Live, up Figueroa to Sunset, turns around and then west on Wilshire to Western and back to LA Live. The course was very wide on Venice Blvd. Some areas had pretty bad cracks and pot holes, but there was so much space, it was fine. Once we got onto Figueroa, the course got very narrow. This was being used for both bike out and back legs and for run out and back. There were sections with pedestrians just walking across and the police did a poor job stopping people at places. Once, we got onto Wilshire, the road was horrible. I honestly think it’s somewhat unacceptable how bad the road conditions were. Potholes and crack everywhere. I sincerely hope the organizers rethink these conditions because it was very unsafe and I had to really slow down to avoid dying. Overall, the course had some cool views, but like I said, the main thing that stuck out was how unsafe it felt in the last half.
The run is two loops down Figueroa and Wilshire to Griffith. The road is still bad of course, but much more manageable on foot. This section is why I’d give it a 3/5 on difficulty. You gain a little over 400 ft in the 6.2 miles. The gradient up Wilshire hits 7% and is a bit challenging on tired legs. Views are great though.
After running to the finish line I was handed a medal, banana, protein bar, water, and a herbalife24 branded towel. The finish line festival was pretty cool.. it is LA Live after all. They were also giving out Herbalife24 shakes in shaker bottles. While I am not a fan of this company, I must admit the shakes were very tasty.
Now, it was time to pick up our gear. This was kind of a mess. The volunteers ripped off my bike # when racking my bike so I had trouble finding it. Then after going around and collecting all the different gear bags, we were informed that the T1 bags had not arrived and it would still take 30 minutes for them to get there. When they finally arrived, there was a massive human traffic jam and it turns out the bags were not very well organized. The volunteers had trouble finding our bags.
Overall, I wouldn’t do this triathlon again unless they changed the bike course. There was more good than bad, but damn those roads were terrible. This one is definitely on the more expensive side and while riding through K-town is cool, I think it would be better to have safer roads. Perhaps take the bike course south towards USC and keep Wilshire for the run.