Saturday we drove the 4 hours down to Connecticut in time to pick up our packets, get in a quick (30 minute) bike ride and then drop our bikes off. The race transition and packet pickup is in a little amusement park. Later that night, we went out to dinner with a bunch of people on BTT. I finished off the evening with some foam rolling, icing my knees and getting my stuff ready for the morning.
4am came and off goes the alarm. I did some extra foam rolling to make sure my legs were nice and loose (or as much as they’ll ever be). After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and headed over to the amusement park. I was one of the later swim waves so once they kicked everyone out of transition we went down to the beach to watch the pros go off. There were a lot of world-class pros doing this race and it was great to see them swim (wish I could swim that fast).
After a quick warm up and a last minute port-a-potty stop it was time to race. Usually the beginning of the swim is basically a frantic mess that I try to survive. This race was weird in that I had some clean water right at the start and the frantic mess came later in the swim. The swim felt surprisingly good and I was hoping to at least PR that part of the race. No luck! It turns out the swim was a little slower than my Timberman one which I definitely didn’t expect since it felt so good. Oh well…need to work on that this winter.
This transition went a lot better than my T1 at Timberman in that I could actually see this time. It’s always sad seeing so many bikes off the rack when I get out of the swim but it just makes me work my butt off on the bike. This race was no different so I went straight to work pushing as hard as I could. I knew coming into the race that the bike course was pretty hilly. I was feeling pretty good about this though considering all of my rides lately (since moving to VT) have been hilly and my last 60 mile ride had over 1,000 feet of more climbing than the Quassy course.
About halfway through the bike course there was a pretty long hill but at least the pitch wasn’t too bad. I actually enjoyed this bike course (I guess Keith is wearing off on me). The one thing I did not like which always seems to happen is the excessive amount of slow people that feel the need to hog the lane. People seriously need to stay to the side of the road and not on the yellow line. Needless to say I was saying, “On your left!” way too much.
T2 was uneventful and off I went for the half marathon. Around mile 2, I stopped to use the port-a-potty since I’d been holding it the last half hour or so on the bike. The guy that was in there took FOREVER! I started banging on the door and was really close to yelling at the guy to get out of there (since there was only one). After about a 3 minute delay, I was ready to tackle the rest of the run. This run course was brutally hilly! There was hardly any flat; just up, up and away or doooown. I was way more worried about the downhill and I was just praying my knees would hold up. My other goal during the run was to try to hold back a bit so I didn’t mess up my knees for Lake Placid. This was really tough as I wanted to push myself on the run and go faster but I knew that would be a mistake in the long run (no pun intended). Maybe one day my knees will cooperate and I’ll actually become a runner!
The last couple miles were pretty painful and I was ready to be done. The add insult to injury, there was another hill close to the last mile. Everyone else around me started walking up the hill but I refused to start walking (even if my run pace may have been close to a walking pace). The person who designed this course must have been an amazing runner with about 1/2 dozen screws loose! I'm surprised they didn't just pick one super large hill and make us do repeats up and down it for 1/2 marathon. Aaanyways I was very happy to see the amusement park again and the finish line!
 |
| Aaaand done! |
Wrap up:
-This course was extremely challenging and I’d definitely like to take another crack at it.
-Rev3 runs a really good race and I enjoyed the atmosphere more than a WTC race.
-My body has recovered fairly well from the race and I’m surprisingly not very sore (gasp!).
-More sunscreen is needed on the shoulder / forearm area as I definitely got sunburnt.
-Quassy is NOT a PR kind of race (although maybe with the help of some VT mountains it could be).
 |
| Post race |
Swim time: 40:47 (17th out of 25 in AG)
Bike time: 3:05:19 (3rd out of 25 in AG)
Run time: 1:59:06 (Tied for 15th out of 25 in AG)
Total time: 5:49:04 (7th out of 25 in AG)
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~Kenji Miyazawa
No comments:
Post a Comment