OLD ORCHARD BEACH – A prepared and organized Old Orchard Beach makes sure the inaugural race goes off without a hitch.

OLD ORCHARD BEACH – Swim 1.2 miles. Bike 56 miles. Then run 13.1 miles.

And do it starting at 6 a.m.

Sounds crazy, but that’s what nearly 1,200 triathletes from all over the country and around the world did Sunday in the inaugural Revolution3 Triathlon in Old Orchard Beach. Revolution3 Triathlon, a group that organizes professional events nationally, put on the race, and its $25,000 purse drew 33 professionals from the upper echelons of the triathlon world, as well as scores of amateur competitors.

Putting on such a large event in a small seaside town presented a logistical challenge for Old Orchard Beach, Assistant Town Manager Louise Reid said, but in the end the event went off without a hitch.

“The comments that have been made to me by volunteers and department heads who were involved was that it was one of the most organized events that they’d been a part of,” Reid said. “It was smooth, it was well attended, and the comments that were made to our police officers and our volunteers were thank you from the company and all the participants.”

Not all of the competitors completed the long-distance 70.3-mile half-Ironman course. Many competitors, including the professionals, opted for the 0.9-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike and a 6.2-mile run Olympic Rev route.

The swim portion of the race took place off Old Orchard’s well-known beach, ending at the Pier, where the athletes got out of the water and transitioned to the bike event.

The bike course winded out into the countryside, snaking through the roads of Old Orchard Beach, Saco, Dayton, Lyman, Waterboro, Hollis and Scarborough, and the last-leg running portion took the athletes through Scarborough Marsh and over a portion of the Eastern Trail before coming full-circle back to the finish line on 1st Street in Old Orchard Beach.

Jesse Thomas, 32, of Eugene, Ore., won the men’s professional event in a time of 1:48:33, more than two minutes ahead of second-place finisher Conrad Stoltz of South Africa. It was Thomas’s first-ever victory in a Rev3 event, and he had nothing but praise for the course.

“I came here for the first time a year ago and I fell in love with it then,” Thomas said. “It was just absolutely gorgeous, so I knew it was going to be pretty but I’d never been in the Old Orchard area, and it just felt awesome. Maine is my second favorite state, after Oregon. It was just beautiful out there and it went as well as it could of for me. It was a great day.”

For Stoltz the race also featured something new, marking his first visit to the East Coast. A four-time world champion of the off-road triathlon XTERRA Series, the Rev3 marked a departure for Stoltz, who is used to mountain biking and running through unpaved, steep and hilly terrain.

Calling it a “very honest race,” he said the local course was a good all-around one for both the seasoned pros as well as beginners trying their first triathlons.

“I think triathlon is one of the fastest-growing sports at the moment because even someone who’s been on the couch their whole life can get out there and do a fun race – you don’t have to go hard,” Stoltz said. “I pay the rent with this so I have to go hard, but if you’re an age grouper you don’t have to go hard, you don’t have to win, you can just go out there and have fun and enjoy it.”

Lauren Goss of Mount Pleasant, S.C., took the women’s event in a time of 2:02:37, nearly four minutes ahead of California’s Becky Lavelle. She echoed Thomas and Stoltz’s applause of the course and the event, saying it was great to race in the ocean and along relatively quiet country roads as opposed to the cities Olympic triathlons are normally conducted on.

“The Eastern Trail was beautiful. I would love to live here just to run on that,” Goss said. “It’s a very fair course. It’s not extremely easy, but it’s not extremely hard. It’s a good one for a beginner to do. And it’s a great venue, so I think this race will be around for a while.”

While the race gained the approval from the professionals, it also garnered plenty of accolades from the amateur age-groupers who made up the majority of the event’s participants.

Dawn Pendergrass of Saco, a member of the Kennebunk Beach Triathlon Club, trains on the race course a couple times a week, and getting to compete with professional triathletes on her hometown course was something special.

“This is such a first-rate production. To have world-class triathletes come here and to be able to compete alongside them in your back yard is just something you don’t think you’d be able to do in Old Orchard Beach,” she said. “It’s beautiful scenery, we’re going by wild flower meadows and just quintessential sort of Maine countryside, and I think it’s so great that people from all over the world are getting to see a little bit of what we know.”

In the last five to eight years Old Orchard has seen an explosion in the number of people looking to come to the town to partake in outdoor pursuits such as hiking, biking, kayaking and canoeing, said Bud Harmon, president of the Old Orchard Beach Chamber of Commerce. Successfully putting on a nationally competitive triathlon will only will only assist the Chamber’s attempts to bring that kind of vacationers in.

“This certainly was the type of clientele that was really good to have at this time of year, because once they get a view of Maine and what its all about their bound to come back,” Harmon said. “All the stats show that about 80 percent of our visitors are repeat visitors, so once you can get them to come to Maine they tend to come back.

“We can only hope to have more of these kinds of events in Old Orchard Beach.”

Having 1,200 athletes for the first-year race was called outstanding by the organizers of Rev3, who were originally hoping for 600-800 when they started to organize the race last year. The company likes to keep its races in the same locations year after year as they build a following, and behind the success of Sunday’s inaugural event, Rev3 said they’d almost certainly be back in Old Orchard Beach next summer.

“We couldn’t have had a more beautiful day today,” Rev3 race director Eric Opdyke said. “I’ve heard so much positive feedback from the athletes that they love the community and they love the course. Quite honestly it’s just the perfect venue for us. We just couldn’t have asked for a better first year, and here’s really no reason why we wouldn’t come back.”

For Reid and the town, Opdyke’s positive response is music to the ears.

“I think from (Rev3’s) standpoint it was even more successful than they thought it would be,” Reid said. “I think they know what they’re doing and I think they carry it off well, and I think that the town’s response to all that they asked us to do has been totally positive.

“Everybody was on board for it, and I think it was a great thing to bring to our town the week before Labor Day. We’d love to have them back.”

The first wave of swimmers hits the water, bathed in the golden glow of the just-rising sun. (Photos by Rich Obrey)