With a new event and a new running course, the Deschutes Dash Weekend Sports Festival is changing things up in its ninth year.

But for those who have participated in or watched the annual multisport festival in Bend, this weekend’s event will still have a familiar feel. Racers will compete in a triathlon, a duathlon, a running race and a youth event on each day of the festival, scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday in and around Bend’s Old Mill District.

The biggest change this year is the addition of an event that is relatively new on the multisport scene: aquabike. While the sport’s name might conjure up an image of a bike riding on the water, it’s actually just two-thirds of a conventional triathlon — the swimming and cycling legs — somewhat like the more common duathlon (running and biking).

This year’s Deschutes Dash will include two aquabike events — an Olympic distance (a 1,500-yard swim and a 25-mile bike ride) on Saturday and a sprint distance (a 1,300-yard swim and a 12.5-mile bike) on Sunday. Event director Lee Perry of Lay It Out Events said early this week that registration has been slow so far for the aquabike races, but he expects the event to become more popular in the future.

“Aquabike is rapidly growing in the multisport field right now,” Perry said. “A lot of events have had a soft opening the first year with not many racers, and the next year they have 400 racers. Once (aquabike) gets out there, people will find it and then seek it out, I think.”

According to USA Triathlon, aquabike was created for racing enthusiasts who enjoy multisport competitions but want to avoid the running legs, which can be difficult to complete for participants with joint issues or injuries.

Also new this year are the changes to the Deschutes Dash running courses for all events. Both the 5K and 10K races will now finish in the Les Schwab Amphitheater, and both will now take runners around the Deschutes River on a clockwise route, rather than counterclockwise.

Also, the 10K course used to be a two-lap circuit of the 5K course; now, the 10K course is one big loop, taking runners to Columbia Park to the north and the South Canyon Trail Bridge to the south.

“We worked really hard on being able to do one big loop, because we knew that was what racers were looking for,” Perry explained.

According to Perry, the most popular event of the weekend continues to be the sprint-distance triathlon, with the relatively easier 1,300-yard swim, 12.5-mile bike and 5-kilometer run (compared with the Olympic-distance triathlon that has a longer swim and doubles the length of the bike and the run). Perry notes that the Olympic tri has good registration numbers as well, speculating that the change to the 10K course could make that race more popular.

While competitors and spectators will find a number of tweaks in this year’s event, one thing the races will likely have in common this weekend is the heat. High temperatures for the weekend are currently forecast to be in the mid-80s, with sunny skies and little cloud cover. Perry said the Deschutes Dash is taking extra precautions to deal with the heat.

“It’s definitely on the hot side of what we like to see,” Perry said. “We’re adding a lot more water and Gatorade to the course than we normally have. We want people to be safe.”

—Reporter: dgouker@bendbulletin.com