Biscay loves the people she stays with each year. She enjoys the unique support competitors receive from the thousands of area citizens who ring the bike and run courses. And she loves the challenges that make this event one of the most difficult of all the Ironman venues.
No wonder Biscay has a victory, two second-place finishes and a third-place finish in four trips to the Ironman Wisconsin.
“I’ve had four years in a row of good days here in Madison so I kind of expect to have a good day when I come here,” said the 32-year-old professional triathlete from Tucson, Ariz., who is a favorite to win the women’s race again Sunday. “I love this race. I really look forward to it.”
It’s hard to overlook all the challenges Wisconsin’s swim, bike and run courses present to the 2,500 competitors during this Ironman competition that is in its ninth year.
A recent analysis in runtri.com ranked the layout the second-toughest of the 25 Ironman courses worldwide. Based on average finish times of the competitors, only the Ironman St. George, Utah, had a higher time than Wisconsin’s average of 13 hours, 16 minutes.
Remarkably, the analysis showed Wisconsin’s bike course ranked the least toughest of its three courses. The 26.2-mile run course was third-toughest overall in the world, the 2.4-mile swim course was sixth overall and the 112-mile bike course was seventh overall.
Competitors such as Biscay said those numbers don’t tell the real story.
“This bike course is the most challenging of the three disciplines here and it is uniquely challenging compared to other courses on the circuit,” said Biscay, who has competed in more than 45 Ironman competitions around the world. “The hills are just relentless. There’s hardly a flat section to this course. You hit the hills five miles into the course and you’re not finished with them until Mile 107 or 108. The continuous rolling hills make this bike course especially challenging. That, to me, is what stands out.”
Eric Bean, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Wisconsin who competes professionally in Ironmans, said the bike course is what defines the Wisconsin event. “The good thing is that the most challenging parts of the course — there are some major climbs — they resemble the Tour de France because of the crowd support there,” he said. “So you feel the crowd power you up the hills.”
The run course offers some unique challenges because of all the turns, which are brutal on tired legs. “There are two loops and there are four 180-degree turns per loop,” Bean said.
But just because its average time is impressively high doesn’t mean it’s a difficult route.
“It’s a slow run, which is different than a hard run,” Biscay said. “It’s a slow run because they have taken the time to route us in front of the spectators so many times — you go up and down State Street twice per loop, you do a lap in the football stadium. That’s all very cool and makes for an awesome running experience but it makes the course slow.”
Despite the greenish tint of Lake Monona, many Ironman competitors give it high marks for cleanliness. But Gina Crawford, a 29-year-old pro from New Zealand who won here in 2007, missed last year’s event because she got sick just prior to the start. She hasn’t ruled out swimming through blue-green algae during a practice swim as a cause for making her sick.
But race director Ryan Richards said there were no blue-green algae counts from the five water-quality tests taken three days prior to the race and the day of the race. And the bacteria counts in the lake taken Friday were extremely low, he added.
Bean and Biscay said they compete in much worse swimming environments. “Coming from Louisville a couple weeks ago, we swam in the river right there and there were some very interesting smells during that swim,” Bean said. “I would say that’s a grosser swim. I feel very comfortable swimming in Lake Monona.”
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