FitEgg.com Multisport Reviews
photo credit: Tony Crescibene
The Callaway Gardens Triathlon is the oldest tri in the continental U.S. (27 years) and takes place at the absolutely gorgeous Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, GA. It involves 1K swim in Robin Lake, 30K bike through the park, and 8k run around the lake.
While I wanted to love this race and the course was amazingly beautiful, it has to be the most poorly run tri I’ve ever entered. Registration was absolute chaos. I arrived at the park and no one seemed to know that there was actually going to BE a triathlon the next day. Registration was nearly impossible to find. At 5:30 am on the morning of the race I was left to find the the transition area with no guidance. No problem, I can handle this…
The swim course went really well. I was out of the water in 12:25 and into T1 for a quick, 3:01, change. The bike course had plenty of hills and was an absolutely beautiful ride, however it was poorly monitored for traffic and injuries (and there were a number of crashes this year). It’s possible I simply missed any safety crew, but if they were there, they were nearly impossible to identify. Another shortcoming of this race was the lack of organized rest areas and fluid stations. There were no water stations between mile 3 and mile 6 on the bike course, and there was no water or Gatorade provided at the finish. I finished the bike in 1:04:14 and was really happy with my T2 time of 2:02. The run was uneventful, other than the great views and I finished in 44:57, just behind two more Athenas. Inside the finishers tent I found two jugs of water and Gatorade, but these jugs were constantly running dry from the demand of the thirsty finishers. Finally, I know this is a minor detail, but there are no finishers medals or any sort of ‘Yay! Congratulations! You finished!’ type of thing. I know none of us do tri’s for the finishing medal, at least not completely, but a little something to put on the wall never hurt anyone. Picking up a medal certainly adds to the high of finishing. I’m really happy with my finish, 2:06:36 overall. I had a great day and finished 3rd in the Athena class.
Many competitors that I talked to had a nightmarish time with the hotel accommodations. I checked in at the same time as many other competitors and was shocked to discover that there was no room at the Mountain Inn, the host accommodation. We were ‘upgraded’ to cabin in the woods, but the cabin proved to be more inconvenient for competitors as it required a car ride through the woods, out of the park, and down the road a bit, while the Inn was directly across from the start. I can’t speak for anyone else’s cabin, but ours was pretty unclean and didn’t have fresh toiletries. I was further disappointed in the Inn’s unwillingness to allow late checkouts. Now, I know that a late checkout is a luxury and that there could have been many folks arriving later that day that prevented a late checkout, but since this tri is a big deal in Pine Mountain, I’d hope for a little more flexibility and accommodation. A staff member actually told me that they’d throw our stuff out at 11am if it was still in the cabin.
I won’t completely berate this event, however. As I mentioned, the course is breath-taking, and very nicely set up in terms of inclines and downs. There were a lot of families there for the Labor Day weekend, so there was a lot of cheering and crowd support. It is also not a bad way to spend the weekend – the beach is great, and they have some butterfly gardens and great restaurants. The highlight is probably the hot air balloon festival. You can pay for a tethered ride if the wind conditions are okay, and watching the balloons launch each evening was pretty spectacular.
Overall, I can’t say I’d recommend this triathlon, and I’m not sure how it has become rated in the top 10 U.S. tri’s. I am hoping that I caught the event on an ‘off’ year, as there are plenty of glowing reviews on BeginnerTriathlete.com. In the end, if you go into the race knowing that you’re out there on your own without much organization or support, you’d probably have a blast.
