The family and myself arrived at the age groupe transition site at 5:30AM so that my wife could set up for her race. it was a beautifull Autumn morning, once the sun came up, and the age groupe competitors raced under ideal conditions. That makes photography quite straight forward.
By the time I walked down to the Opera House for the start of the Professional Womens I.T.U. race start, the clouds were starting to gather, but the race finished without any major weather changes, though the clouds continued to increase.
After the womens race, I went and found the family to discuss exit stratergies after the race, Had some lunch, and then went to my first position at the turn in the express way to start photographing the mens race. Fortunatly I always carry a shower jacket in my camera bag, and a plastic bag with a number of rubber bands that I fit over the lens hood of my camera to keep my kit dry. As the mens field came up from the Opera House on their bikes, so did the rain, with the sky getting darker every second and the rain getting heavier.
This made the chance of getting good images much harder, and made me have to change from shooting at 100ASA to having to set the camera at 400ASA, which decreases the quality of the images.
Even so, I hope you will get an idea of the conditions the men had to race in. I still ended up quite wet, but was able to keep the camera dry.
Jeff