This year for the 2024 TYR Wodapalooza, all teams and individuals (except the Elite division) will take on the event, Bike Race. But for these athletes, the competition is not inside Bayfront Park. Instead, athletes will be heading off-campus to Virginia Key North Point Park.
So what exactly is Virginia Key North Point Park?
Let’s take a look…
Virginia Key North Point Park is located on Virginia Key just north of Key Biscayne. It is a 6-mile drive from Bayfront Park. According to miamiandbeaches.com, Virginia Key North Point Park is widely considered to be one of the best biking trails in Miami. The bike trails feature varying levels of difficulty, ranging from flat for novice riders to and advanced course with technical climbs and steep descents.
Of course, athletes will be running the trails rather than mountain biking. However, by the looks of it, there are plenty of places with uneven terrain that could make footing a bit precarious.
Based on the teaser video by Wodapalooza, athletes will be running on narrow, winding paths and some wooden features of the bike trail. Check that out below…
There are quite a few videos on YouTube of cyclists riding their mountain bikes on the trails. Most, however, are on the advanced trails with steep drops and narrow wooden bridges. It’s unlikely that the 5k run will be on these. Yet, there are plenty of trails to choose from as shown on the trail map below.
In watching the Wodapalooza teaser video, it appears that athletes will be starting in the bottom right hand corner of the park for the Echo Bike portion of the workout. From there, they would run up the “Long and Winding Road” on the ride side of the map above to enter the park.
From there, the Long and Winding Road is a narrow, sandy path littered with rocks.
At one point in the Wodapalooza, the athlete passes a sign labeled “Bad to the Bone”, one of the more hilly trails in the park.
In looking at all of the trails, passing could become difficult in many areas of the course. Because of this it could be extremely important to finish the 50/40 calories on the Echo Bike quickly so that you are not stuck behind slower runners at points in the race.
So while we don’t know the exact route of the course it seems very likely that the runners will stick to the beginner and intermediate trails. The following video captures all of those trails to give you a sense of the terrain and nature of what the athletes will likely encounter on the 3.1 mile race.
