Rev3 Knoxville - Half Rev - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Happy with this. Time includes run along slippery wooden dock in wetsuit (no strippers).

Was tired by the end of the swim. Really need to work on shoulder/lat endurance before IMWI.

Lost some time by being cautious in the technical descents, but I didn't know the course and prefer to be careful.

Nada.

Hot-and-hilly.

High was 85F for the day, sunny. Not sure what temp was when we finished, but it felt warm. I'm sure most of it was just lack of heat to train in so far this year. Thankfully, some of the run was shaded.

Had some calf cramping issues near the end, but didn't walk a step on this challenging course. Very happy about that.

Mary and I dropped the three monkeys off with friends on Friday and drove down to Knoxville for the weekend. That was probably the nicest part of the whole weekend! There was also a large crew from Lex doing the race, and it was fun hanging out with them on Sat and Sun.

Saturday included driving the bike+run courses. Bike had lots of technical descending, and the run course was hillier than I expected.
The Half Rev started Sunday at 7:30 (male <40 + clydes), and my wave (old and frail men) went off at 7:35, followed by the women at 7:40. Thankfully, swim was uneventful, came out somewhere around 32 minutes, which I was pleased with. Shoulders and lats were fatigued though, so I need to keep working on swim endurance for the 2.4 mile swim in September if I don’t want pace to drop off…

Got out on the bike and started settling in. At mile 2 I saw someone changing a flat. Always hate to see that, but this time it was one of my good training buddies. Damn! Asked if he needed anything, he said he was set. (Turns out he managed to change a rear flat in 8 minutes.) The rest of the bike was pretty smooth. I gradually moved up the field, keeping RPE steady, and riding the descents cautiously. (Rode purely by RPE, no computer/data of any kind.)

I always find the interactions out on the bike interesting. In races like this, you're not redlining the bike, so I like to talk briefly to people as I go by. It's interesting the different reactions that generates. Generally, the closer you get to the front of the race, the more serious people seem, and they seem less interested in talking.

Around mile 30, the eventual 2nd place male came by me on one of the faster descents. He was in the earlier wave, and I had passed him in the swim. The two of us passed each other back and forth several times for the next ~20 miles. He was a much better descender than me, and would pull away on the downs. I would catch back up on the flats/ups. He finally put in a surge at around mile 50 on one of the downhills to try to pull away. In talking to him after the race, he said he realized he needed to put 5 minutes into me yet due to the wave differences. I figured that was what was going on, so I let him go. It was clear at this point that the race would be decided on the run, and it wasn't worth burning any extra matches on the bike. (I was a little uneasy because he looked like a runner; turns out he had run at Georgia Tech. I might have played it differently had I known that.)

Coming out of T2 I put my Garmin on, and it took about 0.5 miles to lock. My goal for the run was 1:21:xx, which would require about 6:16 pace. Once the GPS locked, I saw I felt good running right around this pace for the first 3-or-so miles.

At around mile 3 (just after the OLY run turnaround), the run course gets quite hilly, probably the hilliest run course I've done in a triathlon. I was really worried about how my calves would act, they seem to be my weakest link right now, and I had taken two weeks of little-to-no running coming into the race to let a minor strain in my right calf heal. Thankfully, they held up well when we hit the hills. I was actually feeling stronger as the run progressed, and was gaining ground on the guy that had passed me on the bike. He was about 45 seconds up on my out of T2, and I managed to narrow that to about 15 seconds and then just stayed there. The two of us were gradually passing what turned out to be the rest of the field.

In the HalfRev, you don't know exactly where everyone is until the turn-around at mile ~6.5. At this point I saw there were only one other person in front of us. He was a young guy and was almost exactly 5 minutes up. So, due to the wave difference, we were about even, and it looked like he was running slower. At that point I knew it was going to come down to me and the guy I had been shadowing since mile 30 of the bike. I did a quick calculation and realized that it was unlikely he could beat me if I held my current pace, which I felt like I could (wrong).

My calves started to complain on the hills after the turnaround and were quite unhappy by the time we got back to the flat section of the run course, with some minor cramping starting. End result was I couldn't hold the pace I had planned. And my challenger managed to pick up his pace! The combination of me slowing and him accelerating put him out of my sight by mile ~10. From that point on, I just held on. Felt like I was still running goal pace, but Garmin told me I was slowing.

The last 0.5 miles was a long uphill to the Finish. That seemed to last for-ev-er. Crossed the line and learned that I had managed to win by about 2.5 minutes. (That means the 2nd place finisher put almost 2.5 minutes into me over the last 4 miles of the run. Nicely done!)

Talked to a bunch of the other participants after the race, which is always fun. (It's like going to a bar, but better. Instead of everyone being relaxed by alcohol, everyone is on an endorphin high.)

Overall, it was a fun race and a great weekend. There were some issues with the timing, but Rev3 posted some info on ST explaining why that happened (some of their equipment got stuck in customs coming up from Costa Rica).

Will def do another Rev3 event if/when it fits the schedule.