Rev3 Quassy Race Report

I managed to pull off one amazing Half Ironman race!  Woohoooooooo!  Here's the nitty gritty:

Swim = 37:57
T1 = 3:21
Bike = 3:25:59
T2 = 2:34
Run = 1:57:12
Total Time = 6:07:04
30-34 Age Group = 24/53
Women Overall Place = 81/226

I was only 7 minutes off my pre-race goal and I'll take it with a huge grin on my face!  Kinda like the one below... with none other than 2010 Ironman World Champ... Pro Mirinda Carfrae!!

This race was stacked with pro's and I swear, this is the ONLY sport where you can go up to the pro's, have a chat, get a picture and not be shooed away by some handler.  Mirinda was nothing but nice, even when I made her drop her registration stuff when I was trying to shake her hand! heh - whoops. 

So on to the race.... after an eventful night of NOT sleeping... (now that story needs a post of it's own.  Let's just say getting woken up to a drunk man kicking your hotel room door is not the best pre-race sleep) ...the alarm went off at 4:30.  I ate my breakfast of a plain bagel, banana, water and then some gu chomps in transition.  Simon was our super trooper fan and drove myself and my friend Enrico to the race start. 

I set up my transition pretty effortlessly and I was nervous but I kept telling myself that it's just another training day.  It's always hard to trust your training... you just never know if it will all come together or not.  For 2 out of the 3 sports it did.

SWIM:
I talked with my Coach on the beach before our waves went off (she rocked Rev with 2nd in her age group and 8th woman overall!!) and we both decided that I should start the swim in the front and just get in there!  I was nervous but I know I need to work on swimming surrounded by 2500 "friends" for Lake Placid.

In my sausage suit

I lined up in the front and to the right a little bit.  I still had a clear line to swim so I was ready to dolphin dive my way to the front!  The announcer counted down and yelled go!  I immediately starting running following some girls into the water. 

"Holy cow, I'm doing it!  I'm actually getting near the front and not getting pummeled. This is great!"

I'm one of those silver caps!

Until IT happened.  What's IT?  Well, all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. My chest felt like it was constricted.  I had to breathe every stroke.  Finally, I had to stop.  I watched as my nice front of the pack spot slipped away and all the women swam away from me.  I had to get control of my breathing or else I was gonna be in some trouble.  I took a minute, calmed myself down and started swimming again.  I had to breathe every stroke then after a couple of minutes I got comfortable in my normal 4 stroke breathing pattern.  From there on, I knew my swim time was going to be longer than 35 minutes.  I don't understand what happened here!  Last weekend I felt awesome swimming 2.4 miles and this weekend all my confidence disappeared.  I had to have been a mental thing because I haven't felt this way in open water swimming for a long time.  I think I actually fare better when it's an in water start and there's no running or dolphin diving involved. 
Anyway, I was bummed during most of the swim so I didn't really enjoy it as much as I had during the 2.4 swim.  I just focused on breathing and sighting.  The sighting got a little hard after the first turn bouy as we were swimming directly into the sun.  I just followed some feet until I saw the big red and final turn bouy. 

My goal was to swim in 35 minutes and to keep Coach Jenn at bay in the water.  Her swim wave was 4 minutes after mine so if I actually swam in 35 minutes I would have reached both my goals.  Yes, she beat me out of the water!

I'm happy to be done swimming

T-1 I was 21 seconds slower than I planned.  I'll take it!  I'm spoiled because the last few races I've down have had wetsuit strippers so my legs of my wetsuit got a little stuck on my ankles. (No, I don't have cankles, incase you were wondering)  Other than that, it went smoothly.

Just heading out on a little 56 mile ride... see ya!

BIKE:
This bike course is NO JOKE!  You are either going up, going down, turning, then going back up again.  So this is perfect Lake Placid training for me.  Bring it HILLS!  I started out well but my heart rate was a little too high for the first 5 miles.  Finally, it went down to my normal bike heart rate between 140 & 150 and occasionally spiking on the climbs.  I felt super comfortable on my Roo and the first couple of hills within the first 10 miles I stood up to get over them.  Probably not the smartest idea but I felt like I needed to get more blood flow to my legs and this worked. 

My garmin clocked 3,692 feet of climbing over 56 miles.  That's a lot of hills!  There were a few good things about this course.  One was that even though the hills are relentless there's really only one long steep climb.  The rest are rollers.  I can handle that and I think the rollers are the type of hills I need the most work on. I don't mind a short steep hill... but give me a gradual 5 mile climb... like the climb past Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid?  No thank you!  Whenever I felt crappy on the bike, which actually only happened about 2x, I thought back to all the climbing I did at the Zof.  I climbed two freakin' mountains 3 times!!  This is nothing!

The second good thing was that the course was stunning!!  You biked on small country roads past farms, mansions, and apparantly an emu farm but I missed that one.  During my two "low" periods on the bike, I would lift my head up, take in the beautiful scenery and remind myself how lucky I am to be doing this! 

Last, but certainly not least, the volunteers at the aid stations were awesome!  They were enthusiastic, yelled out to you and they made it super easy to pick up water, gaterade or gu.  Those people deserve a medal!

By the time I was about 5 miles away from the finish I was ready to run!  I came in off the bike at 3:25:59.  It was less than 5 minutes under the "slow" goal so I was happy with that.  Honestly, I was just happy to still have running legs after that course!

Oh wait, I forgot to add the most important thing about the bike... Did I pee on my beautiful pink camo Roo??  A little bit!  I definitily had to pee but since the course was either up or down there wasn't really any good chance to stop pedaling and focus on peeing.  I was able to release enough that it held me over til I got to the run.

OH!  One more biking tidbit!  What goes up must come down so there were a couple of descents that were pretty fun!  I am so, so comfortable on my Roo in aero that I rode every single descent in my aerobars with no brakes!  It was such a rush!  I would pass people, mostly dudes, and I would feel great!  Don't tell my Mom, but I went a super fast 41 miles per hour!!!

T-2 Again I was just 34 seconds off my goal time... so that's ok!  No real issues here... I must just take longer to put on socks and sneaks that I thought!

RUN
I took off out of transition and my running legs felt pretty awesome!  My bladder was mega-full so I knew I would have to stop at a porta potty within the first mile.  I don't mind peeing on my bike...  but peeing on myself while running is a different story!



Smiling cause I'm feeling so good!

I was feeling so good that I clocked my first mile in 7:55!!! Um, back off cowgirl, you still have 12.1 hilly miles to run.  7:55 is faster than my 5K pace.... so yeah.  I stopped at the first aid station to use the porta potty.  This cost me about 2 minutes as the girl in front of me went in right before I did.  The second mile split came in at 9:44 so I know I was still running too fast for the first miles.  After the pit stop I felt SO much better.  I think I lost about 2 pounds in pee!
I settled in to a nice 8:20ish pace and my heart rate was around 145-150.  Again, this is a comfortable zone for me so I just held it until the hills hit.  After 3 miles... the hills come 'atcha every which way! I think the second to worst hill on the course is at mile 4.  It's super steep and I was shuffling up so slow that I decided it would be faster for me to walk.  This would be the only hill of this tough run course that I would walk.  I am really proud to say that.  The rest of the run was like the bike course... up, down, turn, up, down, turn.... around miles 8-10 or 11 maybe it got aslightly flatter and I was able to pick up some time there.  I really, really wanted to break 2 hours on this run.  This is the strongest I've felt since I started "real" running in 2004 and this run was showing it.  Every person I passed or passed me I made sure to say "Nice job" or "Keep it up!"  It not only helps other people but it helps me to chat with the other competitors too!  At least for those few seconds I wasn't focusing on my race or how much it hurts.

So I mentioned the second to worst hill on the course at mile 4.  What's the absolute worst hill on the course??  The race organizers thought a steep hill at mile 12.5 would be fun!!  Mile 12.5 - seriously??  It was a killer hill and there were people walking up it.  There was no way in hell I was gonna walk with less than a 1/2 mile to go!  I charged up the hill... well maybe it was more of a fast shuffle... and sprinted my way to the finish line shoot!

I'm almost there!

I heard Simon and my blogger buddy Jon yell my name but I was too focused on breaking 2 hours in my run. And... I did it!!!! I negative split the hilliest half ironman run I've ever done and came in at 1:57 - woohoo!

The Finish!!

Overall I am super happy with how the race turned out.  As I said in my last post, this was a no pressure race for me... just a training day.  I exceeded my run goal, pretty much hit my bike goal (even though I want more improvement before Placid) and well, the swim?  I got more open water experience but my actual swim wasn't that great for me.  It was still a 2 minute PR in a half ironman swim... but I know I am better and faster than 37:59!

After two weeks of being on an Ironman low with being sick... I'm now on an Ironman high!!

47 Days Til Lake Placid!