I'm planning to do the "Over the Mountain" olympic distance race on May 31st. I've been wanting to do this event for two years, but it never seems to fit into my schedule. This year I'm forcing it to fit! It sounds like a really neat venue with a point to point course and two transition areas. You swim 1.5k across a lake to the the first transition area. Then you bike 45k over a mountain and end up at another transition spot. Then you run 10k to the finish.
I wanted to compare the difficulty of the bike course to the Duke 1/2 race, and to my current long bike route (which is hilly). So, I used Photoshop to stretch the elevation maps to the same scale for comparison.
Here are the maps. The first map shows Duke Vs OTM. The second adds my current route to the mix. The blue shaded area is Duke 1/2. The purple line is Over the Mountain. The green area is my current bike route.
Over the Mountain definitely has a couple of steeper climbs than the Duke course. Overall, it doesn't look a whole lot worse than Duke...of course, Duke is a tough bike course! It doesn't look too bad compared to my normal riding conditions - maybe a bit tougher, but nothing that scares me. It will surely be a challenge to make a top bike split of 1:28.
Just added: the yellow areas are Borland Hill. So, OTM is like doing Borland 3x!
(click a maps to enlarge)
