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I feel like the best location is the Embassy Suites downtown, but that might just have been jealousy that they got to roll out of bed and be at the start/finish line. But it was a really cool old building with huge windows, so it felt like it might be nice. We went to a decent pizza place called Woodfire the first night. It was as expected. We also went to Prairie Street Brewery. It was good, but not great. Part of it may have been them being totally unprepared for the onslaught of people this weekend. But the venue was really nice. I took my boys to a Philippino place on Main street called 27 ALUNA that was pretty authentic I think. Otherwise we cooked in the rest of the time. We got a 6br house about 10-15 from downtown. For an Ironman weekend it was perfect, but I'm not sure I'd do it for a couples weekend.

In general Rockford did better than I thought they would for their innaugural run at putting this kind of event on, especially given the challenging heat conditions. I had a fairly low expectation for the city before we got there, but it definitely appears it's trying to re-invent itself.