I decided to skip the first year to let them get the bugs out.....thinking about putting it on the calendar for next year. Wanted to do DESM and RKFD, but I'm not sure DESM is getting a race next year. Rumor is that they're done after this year, which sucks, because it's a nice race. 
on July 2, 2025, 9:38:40, in reply to "Literally just got back from Rockford. Wife did the Ironman 70.3 there this weekend."
Couple of people said that the roads for the bike course were really rough...but one of them is kind of a primadonna, so I take that with a grain of salt.
Downstream swim is never bad, and I'm sure the run sucked just because of the temps. DESM in 2021 was like that....it was 92 and humid when I started the "run".
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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.
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