Anyone considering HITS Full or Half distance for 2013?

My bet is that these races will gain in popularity over time.  Especially if WTC keep jacking up their registration fees!

The $75 for the Half in Napa next Spring is all the incentive I need!  $75 for a well organized half ironman event?!  Awesome.  I've ridden a lot of the roads around the Napa course and it should reasonably warm (well, a 55 degree swim) weather and beautiful scenery.  Done and done.  I'm signing up this week.

Im in for thier Naples race in January. I cant believe the registration for the half was less than I pay for most spirnts.

Looking forward to it!

I'm not sure I would like to race a full iron distance race with 20-30 people, but they don't have any races close to NC, so it is a moot point.

Even 100 people spread over a full distance course is not many. It would be very lonely. I would not be interested in that.

But I guess I'm one of those standoffish people with money to burn.

After doing the Augusta HIM, I think I am going back to smaller races.  I loved Augusta but that was partly because I was in an early swim wave and the bike route was still fairly open.  I heard folks with later swim waves would get caught behinds packs of bikes and not be able to maintain pace.

I raced a HIM in April with ~90 folks and while the ride got lonely at times, as long as the support is there, I liked not getting stuck behind folks and unable to pass due to congestion.  The run was a x2 loop so no loneliness there.  That race is doubling in size next year due to a group committing to race it.

I am looking at either Ocala or Naples since both are equidistance from base camp.  Swimming in the Gulf would be cool.

I've been on the Ironman site many times. I've never even heard of HITS outside of this BT thread. I'm wondering if it might be an issue of people just not knowing...

I am too new to the sport to really even know the difference between the two.. companies?

I signed up for the Ocala race right away after I read about it.