Checking out the preparations for the HyVee Triathlon

This weekend, Des Moines will host their first HyVee World Cup Triathlon. This event will award a record seven hundred thousand dollar purse and be covered by NBC Sunday afternoon. Over the course of the weekend, there will be several age and gender specific runnings over varying courses. For example, Saturday morning, there were triathlons for seven and eight year olds, mostly the children of competitors but also some more local participants. Saturday afternoon, elite teenage competitors will take to the course. Sunday morning, the cycling portion of the course for the amateur classes will take them out of the county to Jordan Creek and back again where they'll finish with their run. The elite adult competition will focus more downtown and make up the distance by turning multiple laps. All will start at Gray's Lake as seen in the photo and I believe all finish near the capitol. It promises to be quite a show and showcase for the community.

I've heard that these are fairly rare and that next year's event will be one of three triathons to qualify people for the United States Olympic team... and the only one in the United States. The designer of the course and event has compared this course with that of Amsterdam; I'm guessing that's a good thing.