After weeks of work and worry, a bike course for Ironman Texas is in place. It travels west rather than north, it's traditional direction.

It is 1 loop, thankfully. It's a turny mother. There are about 80 turns, and that's about twice the number of turns racers face on either the Ironman Wisconsin or Arizona courses. There is a turn every 1.1 miles on average.

This will favor good bike handlers; those who know how to brake and who have good brakes on their bikes; those who can corner faster than others; and riders who are adept at changing gears and whose bikes are in good mechanical condition. There will be dropped chains on this course. The enterprising racer will take his bike into the shop and ask that it be made chain-drop-proof. Electronic shifting renders a bike largely immune from chain drop. Otherwise, a chain catcher might be advised. Jordan Rapp, with his SRAM 1x-equipped Dimond, will not be worrying about chain drop.

The full map of the course is published on the Ironman site.

The Memorial Hermann IRONMAN North American Championship Texas, in The Woodlands, Texas will be contested on May 14 upcoming. Road construction, county politics and recent torrential rains combined to create an almost overwhelming set of obstacles trying the patience and skill of event producers almost to the limit. In the end it was the flooding that cut what organizers had thought was a 112-mile course to 94 miles. Local stakeholders from Harris County provided most of the course described above.