Rev3 Cedar Point - Half Rev - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Started in the middle of the pack and out to the right. I watched a few of the earlier waves and it looked like the majority of people were staying to the left of the sighting buoys. I figured if I stayed to right, I could stay out of the congestion and not sorry about having to swim to far out of my way to avoid the congestion. I choose not to dolphin dive since that gets my HR up, so I waded as far as I could after the horn went off and then started swimming. I had zero contact up until the first turn.

At the first turn, I had some good contact, but was able to handle it pretty good, then went back to the right hand side of the pack. There were quite a few zig-zaggers that were running almost perpendicular to me. But I kept plugging along. At the second turn, I saw a tellow sighting buouy out of the corener of my right eye, so I started heading towards that, After my third breath, a lifeguard caught me and told me I was heading to far right and he corrected me. I would have caught it pretty quick, but luckily he corrected me before I could notice the rest of the pack heading to my left and before I wasted too much time.

After that, it was a nice swim, just kept sighting every 5-8 strokes and made my way towards the Muscle Milk arch. As I was getting closer to the swim exit, I was close to hitting ground with my hands and both legs cramped up at the same time. At that moment I stood up and started walking, then was going to dolphin dive into shore, but they started cramping up again, so I waded a bit until that passed, then jogged to transition.

Nothing really except fo the little navigation snafu on the second turn. My strategy of staying to the right worked great.

I jogged into the TA. Took my time getting my GPS watch on, glasses on, helmet on. No problem getting the wetsuit off, I just seemed to take a little longer than I would have liked.

Probably work with a little more sense of urgency. I just didn't want to get my HR up too much in TA.

My goal for the bike was to watch my heart rate and race my race. Don't try to beat anyone and don't do anything stupid. It's my first HIM, I just wanted to save myself so I didn't blow up on the run. I took it nice and easy and tried to keep my HR in the 144 range. On occasion, I would find myself trying to pass people ahead of me. I would look down and my HR spiked, so I would need to continue to remind myself to race my own race.

About half way through I had to pee really bad and kept debating whether or not I stop along the way at an aid station, go on the bike, or wait until T2. That was an hour and 15 minutes of internal debate. I continued to take in fluids making sure to top off my water at each aid station. I had a bottle of concentrated Infinit on the downtube and took a good gulp of that every 5 miles. Stomach started feeling a little odd, so I would hold off occasionally, but it stayed intact and I never felt dehydrated or to sick.

My debate continued about whether or not to pee and I was getting really uncomfortable, but I finally decided to just try and hold it until T2. That made for a very uncomfortable last 30 minutes on the bike.




Maybe push myself harder. Not sure what to do about the bladder.

Nothing much to say here, I think I had to pee so I bad, I flew through transition. Ran to my rack, rack the bike, helmet off, glasses off, socks on, shoes on, grab race belt and visor.

Spent the first two minutes emptying my bladder, then took off.

Goal was to keep HR below 145 until mile 10, then start racing. I was very comfortable for the first 7 miles, just taking my time and hitting around an 8:30/mile pace. Right where I was planning. I would slow to a walk at the aid stations and drink water at each one. Every 40 minutes or so, I would take two ounces of Infinit Napalm that I was carrying in a bottle in the back pocket of my trishorts.

Around mile 7 the soles of my feet started hurting. My longest run prior to the race was 16.5 miles and I never had this type of pain. I figured it would go away after a mile or so and it never really did. As I was getting to mile 8-9 I found the pain getting worse, and my HR starting to go up in the 150s. I would make an effort to slow down and back it off.

Around mile 10, my feet were killing me, so my strategy of picking up the pace went out the window. My goal was to maintain the pace and work through the foot pain. I did a pretty decent job with that. With about 3 miles left, I started counting down the number of minutes left to finish the race. I started at 27 and would keep telling myself that 27 minutes of foot pain is nothing. With 2 miles left, kept telling myself the same thing. With about a mile left, the pro mens full leaders were just passing me on their first loop of the marathon. The bike escort was having fun and I was joking with him a little bit while he was in front of me. Then the two leaders passed and they had some word of encouragement as they passed me. Took my mind of the foot pain for a little while.

Before I knew it, I was back in the park, with a half mile to go to the finish. Feet still hurting, but I pushed to the finish. As I was running down the shoot, heard the announcer call out my name in a fake Irish accent, made me chuckle and that was it.

I had a great strategy, not going to hard early on in the run allowed me to suffer a bit at the end with my feet hurting me, but I never felt like I had any overexertion. With that said, I could probably go harder. Maybe more brick work would work my feet so they weren't hurting after long bike rides.

I was a bit sore with the feet after it was over so I walked it off, wiped down with a wet cold gatorade towel, grabbed a muscle mile, and walked to the car to get changed. Stretched at the car, walked to the TA, packed up, and headed home. I wanted to get home since I was traveling on Monday.


Probably the fact that it was my first HIM and I wanted to hold back to make sure I didn't fall apart on the run. I think I could have had more bike training coming into the race that would have allowed me to push harder. Also think I could have pushed harder on the run, but again, I wanted to pace myself.


Rev3 is awesome! Top notch event. Great volunteers, great weekend. They could do a better job with the check-in process, but it was great event.