Rev3 Quassy HalfRev Race Report

Once again, I will start my Quassy report with my facebook status quote from last year as it still hold true:

"Just do it... awesome race, awesome venue, great crowd, challenging course... JUST DO THIS RACE! :) If you had only one chance to do the 70.3 distance and you wanted to prove yourself on a tough course with a beautiful swim and top notch amenities, Rev3Quassy is the one you pick."

okay, so this is a little late... the race was two weeks ago! and I know this race report is going to be very different due to the changes that have occurred over the last two weeks... but I don't want to get ahead of things.

Course Overview

Last year I did this same race and I detailed some things about the course and the race in that report, so I'll shorten that here...

It's a Rev3 race so you know the race is QUALITY. I don't think I am overstating when I say this is my absolute favorite Half distance course. It isn't a fast PR course, but it makes you earn your stripes! The swim is in beautiful lake Quassapaug (didn't check the spelling but it's close) the water is very pleasant to swim in. The sighting on course is fine, especially with the HUGE Muscle Milk inflatable at the swim exit. The bike is pretty unrelenting on the hills, you are either up or you're down or your turning :D I am never bored on this course and just to test your mental toughness some more, the last 5-6 miles are uphill, but false flat, so you feel like you should be going faster, but you're not. The run is also hilly, but if you look at the profile, you'll notice, the first 2.5 are downhill, then you step climb from 3-9 with some downhill in there. Once you get to 9 it's downhill or flat again until 12 when you start climbing to the finish. The finish line is AMAZING, just very fun to run through!


So that's the "clinical" report, now for the journey of the day.

I flew up to CT (actually into LaGuardia) with the boys. Alex had driven up earlier in the week with the All3 Truck with all the expo stuff (and most of our luggage, my bike, etc.)

This is the same thing we did last year, and it was the same journey, although with the boys being 1 year older, it was a bit easier. We were delayed on the ground in atlanta for about 1.5 hours, the boys were so great for the ground stop and the flight that when we landed in NY, the head flight attendant gave the boys delta "wings" with much pomp and circumstance. They were SO excited, it was great. (two weeks later and they are still wearing wings any chance the get and telling anyone who asks "we got them for being so good on the place")

We arrived on Thursday night, which gave me all day Friday to play with the boys at Quassy. I drove them over to Alex's parents house in SE CT Saturday morning to spend the night.

Friday was great, got in a practice swim (thanks for watching the boys again Kati!) and some playtime with the kids in quassy.

I was bummed that I missed cheering for all my trakkers teammates who did the Olympic on Saturday (I was dropping boys with my in-laws during the race). Everyone did great!

Saturday got a little crazy in the afternoon with some issues with my bike, but the onsite bike mechanics got everything in order and I was able to rack my bike by 6:00pm (yep, I was the girl out riding her bike at 5:30pm the night before the race) ha ha

I was able to sneak in dinner with my teammates and head back to the house we were staying at to get all my stuff together and nutrition ready for the morning.

A little bit about where my head was at this point...

HalfRev Quassy was the first race that I put on my 2011 calendar. After I finished last year I couldn't wait to get another crack at it! I wanted to really have a kick ass race, but after my race in Knoxville and the fact that I'd spent the interim 3 weeks nursing my left hip/leg back to health (without a great deal of success by the time I got to CT) I knew in my head that I wasn't going to have the race I wanted. The problem being that Quassy is known for it's hills and my "issue" prevented me from getting enough power to go up the hills very quickly. I thought I could hang on for the bike, but I knew the run was going to be tough. I still really wanted to have a great race and didn't want to give up.

RACE DAY

I slept really well the night before the race, like a bit of a "dead to the world" sleep. And I still felt sleepy when I woke up. Obviously because after eating my breakfast and leaving the house, about halfway to the racecourse, I realized I'd left my nutrition behind in the refrigerator (must be a trakkers thing ha ha). Luckily, I had enough time to turn around get it (which of course meant that I had to wake up the person who's house we were staying at with incessant door knocking (ok I admit, banging) and name yelling. haha) and head back to the race course.


The morning actually went fairly smoothly (you know for me and Alex at a Rev3 race - which means, he fixed some last min things on my bike while I frantically set up transition and then was no where to be found for me to say good bye to before the race because of work stuff haha)

Say teammates Kelly and Jamie before the start of the race (thank goodness for my Trakkers family!!!) Jamie even took responsibility for my wedding rings until he could find alex to hold on to them until after the race!

I was in the second to last wave so I was pretty mellow by the time we started. I took off at a mellow even pace. I just don't push the swim, as soon as I do my form breaks down and I swear I either go more slowly or I'm just wasting energy I'll need later. So yeah I pretty much swim at my IM pace.

The best part about that, I felt pretty fresh when I get out of the water. Passed a lady on the way into transition :D. I remembered the hill being tougher to run up last year, so I'm thinking that means I had a better swim.

Checked my watch and things seemed on target, good swim! yeah!


thanks to my teammate Chad for the photo!!

T1:
Quick change out of my TYR Cat 5 wetsuit. I can't say enough good things about this suit!! It fit GREAT, feels like a second skin in the water and comes off SO easily!! LOVE IT!!!

T1 was pretty good for me. I really took my time and got myself ready to head out onto the bike. I put my Espresso in my back pocket (no room for a big tire change bag on my bike frame, so we just taped it all into my extra bottle cage in the back. need to figure something else out for 140.6). I also threw my EFS Liquid Shot in my back pocket. I keep my salt tabs in my bento box. 3 bottles, 1 water (first up to help my stomach settle after the swim), 1 nuun filled, 1 EFS filled (extra cals for end of ride). I know I still need to do a details MET post, but this represents a little more than 100 cals per hour on the bike for me.

BIKE:




As I'm leaving transition, I go to shift into my big chain ring (the first mile is downhill). my bike isn't shifting. I look down to figure out what is going on and I realize -

oh crap! I never put the battery for my Di2 back on to my bike!! I never had to worry about that before! Luckily for me, I realized before I passed by Alex by the expo. My battery was in my backpack that he had at the expo tent. He's cheering for me and I'm yelling "I need my Di2 battery! its in my backpack!!" I've NEVER seen him run so fast. He was back in probably :30. While he's gone, Morgan is trying to calm me down "don't worry, this is no big deal, you've lost no time, less than 30 seconds" It was very sweet. The funny thing was, I wasn't upset at all (I think that is very telling as to my "race" mental status - I wasn't racing there would be no way that I would be this calm if I felt like I was really "in the race")Probably within 1:00 at the most I was back on my bike and peddling way. LESSON LEARNED!!! Add "put battery on bike" to am transition set up checklist!

ok, on to the actual bike!

Beautiful!! Love this bike course. I had decided the night before to go as hard as I could on the bike because I knew I was going to feel horrible on the run anyhow. The tough part about being in a late wave... there are a lot of people in front of you. This is fun in a way, always someone to chase down, but tough in that you have NO idea where you stand vs other female competitors.

I actually felt strong on all of the "long gradual" climbs, but anything short /steep had my left leg acting up again. About 30 miles into bike my hamstrings/calfs started to cramp, I thought it was a dehydration/salt thing, so I started taking more than normal amount of salt tabs (always pack extra!!)

NOTE: it turns out according to my massage therapist, my hamstrings have adhered to my aductors, which apparently causes the aductor to work against anything the hamstrings are doing and vice versa, meaning my muscles were working twice as hard to do the same amount of work (in his words) so the cramping was most likely just plain old muscle fatigue).

Still love this bike course though, and it did seem to being going by more quickly than last year. Because of the leg issues I was having I knew I needed to take some chances on the downhill and ended up going 40+ mph down ,most of the big hills. The fastest according to my Garmin was 42.4 mph! That was fun! I have to say, a lot of that is my trust in my Kestrel 4000, it just handles really well! And it's super aerodynamic, because I was passing guys on the downhill that were WAY heavier than me.

As I went through the last few miles on the bike (those darn false flats) I started to feel really tired. Like, I just wanted to go to bed, not rune 13.1. I actually started to think... at least it's only 13.1 and not 26.2!


RUN:
Felt strong heading out on the run, which was a big boost of confidence. Tummy felt good and I was cruising along the first few miles (helps they are mostly downhill haha, but I felt pretty yucky on these miles last year, so it was nice to feel good) Cheered for the folks still coming in on the bike and they cheered back so that was nice. Gave a guy who was already cramping some of my salt tabs. Feeling good!



official race photo from Brightroom

As I turned onto the hill I said to myself, just get through the next 6 miles however you can, and then once you hit mile 9 its mostly downhill. I was feeling ok, until it got steep, and then my quad cramped and it felt like it pulled my knee cap to the left a little and I started to get concerned...

and this is why I was SO upset with myself after the race. I didn't push. It hurt and I just gave up. I didn't want to deal with the pain on this day and instead of sucking it up and moving on and PUSHING, I just said "nope, not gonna do this today" I had lots of really "reasonable" excuses.

"today isn't your A race, you don't want to get injured"
"rememeber that "it's nothing" quad cramp you pushed through in that 10k that took MONTHS to heal properly... you can't afford that right now!"

oh I had a lot of 'em and they were enough for me to say "enough". So until mile 9 of the run, if anything twinged I just started to walk.

Now, I also started drinking coke at each aid station, and this seemed to help me tremendously and my life became all about making it to the next aid station, because hopefully they will have coke! haha

Once I hit mile 9 I felt better... but even the flats started to get tough near the end. I did want to walk these, but at least I didn't let myself walk on the flat :D

I hit the big hill at 12 (the bottom of it starts at 12 and it just get's steeper for about .8 miles and then you have flatish to the finish line). I was just done, ladies in my AG were passing me and I just didn't care anymore. All I wanted to do was finish. So I made it to the top of the hill, and to the finish chute.

As I ran into the field I heard Alex with the boys "there's mommy, are you ready to run!?!" and I start yelling "please don't send AJ, please don't send AJ" because I knew I was worse off than I'd been in Knoxville. Jason is of course running like he stole it, AJ had already followed so alex had no choice but to run after AJ and pick him up to run to the finish line. So now we have a picture of all four of us, which is nice :D





official race photos by Brightroom

AFTER THE FINISH LINE

So, I cross the line, I'm okay for all of about :45 seconds. Enough time to pick up AJ, give him a hug, hand him off to alex and get my medal. And then I almost collapsed. I was just SO freakin' tired. Alex helped to keep me upright, which, because he is so much taller than me, looks like he's dragging me along... we passed by Matty Reed who was talking to someone after the race. I tried to say "hi" and all that came out was "uh". I think I freaked him out a little ha ha

Sean, the Rev3 announcer (who was on a break because the Pro Awards ceremony was going on) came over and sat with Jason and AJ while I tried to get a hold of myself. I was a mess, crying, falling over, my back side down to my calf muscles was revolting against anything I wanted them to do... ugh. So the kids were worried and Sean says "mommy just had a really tough race, she'll be fine in a little bit".

The best part is that when Kati found me later she said she had seen AJ and he said "my mommy had a really tough race". Yep, he's 2. They didn't have ice baths, so I went to he med tent and just had them pack me in ice. They were worried that I was dehydrated, but I have a huge needle phobia, so I just promised to drink a lot.

This is such a tough course... and I LOVE it. but right after I wasn't very happy.

So right now, I apologize to everyone who asked me how my race went and I made a face. I know I should be happy to have finished Quassy (it's just that tough) especially with a small injury/issue and 2.5 min faster than last year to boot. But I was just DISAPPOINTED in myself and my mental attitude out there.

However, I need to remember... this WASN'T the big goal race of the year. and I wasn't as prepared as I was last year. So to finish faster than last year (all in the swim basically, yeah for working on limiters! and wicked fast wetsuits!!) is still a positive thing.

I've been in my own head a lot over the last few weeks since Quassy. And I've been getting some great recovery/build time in. The legs are feeling better, massage therapy plus chiropractic seems to be fixing all the issues (it's a long list, but suffice to say, for some reason my left hip rotated forward, which elongated my hamstring, which reduced power, so my muscles in the area all started to over compensate and in some cases pulling things even more out of whack. psoas, aductor, hamstring, calf, quad, knees, tibia, hips, etc. all not working as they should or even close enough to fake it anymore). I've also been able to refocus on my big goals, but I'll post more about that later...

All in all, my trip to Quassy was not what I wanted it to be, but you really can't complain about any chance to race a Rev3 race, everything was top notch, course amazingly well marked, aid stations perfectly stocked, volunteers amazing, etc.



The Age Group highlight reel from the race. AJ my little guy, makes an appearance at around 2:52:

Rev3 Quassy 2011 Age Group Highlights! from REVOLUTION3 Triathlon on Vimeo.