Bike Course
As many of you know the Santa Cruz area and particularly West Cliff Drive were severely impacted by the January through March storm in 2023. This created a significant impact to both run and bike courses in the area. The alternatives were 1) cancel the event or 2) create some new courses that would enable the event to be held this year.
We have been working very hard with the City of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Police Department to create some courses that are safe but will still deliver a great race experience for all athletes. Is it perfect? No but it's as close as we can get given the extent of damage in the area and continuing street closures and detours. West Cliff Drive is still closed for traffic and there are detours through neighborhoods that everyone is living with. There are portions that just cannot be accessed by vehicle or by foot.
What's different? The outbound and inbound along West Cliff Drive for the bike course has been moved to Delaware Street. The course required a design that would allow the neighborhoods some kind of ingress/egress to their houses via Swanton Blvd and some controlled access points. They have been living with disruption since January 1 and it was essential that we try and accommodate their needs and sensitivities to the best of our ability.
- Exit and entry to the transition area will not change.
- The end of the course closest to transition will not change because that is required to make a loop to go back out to Delaware.
- All riders will ride on Delaware Avenue out to Swanton Blvd, make a U-Turn and return back down Delaware to Santa Cruz Avenue, making a right turn on Santa Cruz, a left turn onto West Cliff and then a left turn onto Bay Street to create the loop.
This is the area of the new bike course. Note that Delaware Avenue will be totally closed to traffic. The course is a bit shorter and more compact than the other course so the number of loops will increase. The sprint will do three loops and the international race will do 6 loops in order to accommodate the distance. The sprint will be 11.4 miles long and the international will be 22.4miles long (including in and out of Depot Park).
This is an animated link for the course so you can see directional changes. The animation is for the Sprint Course with only 3 loops. The international course will need to double this distance >> Animated Bike Course
