Rev3 Florida - Half Rev - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

No swim :(

I took my time with this. Like I mentioned I was not really pumped for the race at this point, so I went through the process of getting my gloves on, helmet and shoes in a relatively slow fashion.

Try to focus on the fact that even when factors you can't control affect the race conditions, I still should try to do the best I can.

I knew I was going to have a tailwind for the first 25 miles or so. I picked a gear that did not feel hard and I was flying, but so was everyone else. For these 25 miles my split was 1:06, which of course would be impossible without the tailwind. I wished I could bike like that in an Olympic :)

Now, it may have felt like I was going easy, but later when I checked my HR data, it was not that easy. I think that the fact that a lot of people were flying through this course made me go faster than I should without realizing it. And once we turned at the 25 mile mark reality punched me in the face...HARD!

The headwinds were brutal and now there was no choice. I could go "easy" but in order to keep moving with the 20-30 mph headwinds I had to go harder than I would have liked. Towards the end of the ride I was feeling twinges on my left hip, hamstrings and quads and was starting to get worried.

There were a couple of times were I thought the wind was going to make me crash. On one of the corners I saw the two guys in front of me sliding sharply to the right, and I started to think "What are they doing?" I found out soon enough when the wind caught me too, taking me dangerously close to the edge of the road. Luckily I managed to stay upright and survived the ride without incidents. I did see several people crashing and a more serious accident between a bike and a scooter with an ambulance on site.

Also, there is no delicate way to put this, but at the 45 mile mark I started experiencing serious discomfort in the rear area and tried to switch positions as much as possible to alleviate that.

Pace myself better and pay attention to the HR info instead of just riding by feel. I should have saved my strength better for the headwinds. The actual time I finished the bike in was good, but seeing what happened on the run, this can only be categorized as a below average bike segment (maybe even bad).

At this point I knew my time was not going to be what I had hoped for. My wife was really nervous about the bike and did not want to be at the race site with my daughter waiting for me to get to T2. The main reason was that in January I crashed during a Sprint and she was waiting for T2 and I never arrived, since I ended up in the hospital after the ambulance picked me off the ground :)

Given this circumstances I decided to take some extra time and grab my cell from my transition bag and send her a text message letting her know I was done with the bike and was OK. Brownie points for me :)

Nothing

Here starts the horror story. As you can see by the splits, this run went south pretty fast. I slowed down considerably during the first 5 miles and after that there was a lot of walking and some running.

When I started the run I thought maybe I could pull it off and in the first 3 miles I felt OK, but I was slowing down and my quads and abs were starting to hurt from the soreness and light cramps.

Then things got worse and I had no choice, I had to walk. When I finished the first loop, I saw my wife and daughter waiting for me and this gave me some energy to push, but a little after that I was walking again. The last loop was pure pain. I think that if my wife and daughter had not been at the race with me I would have probably called it quits after finishing the first loop.

After a loooong second loop it was finally time for some happiness again, I grabbed my daughter and we run together through the finish chute.

Fix the bike pacing issues!

When I crossed the finish line I grabbed some Gatorade, but I felt awful. I was nauseous and My legs hurt pretty bad. I sat for a while and then walked a bit and stood around watching the pro awards with my wife, daughter, a friend from work (who did awesome btw finishing in 4:29) and his father. I was hoping I would start feeling better but that did not happen. I could not eat anything and I felt like just going to the hotel to take a shower. I walked to transition to get my bike and it felt like walking to the end of the earth and back. Then got to the hotel and took a super long shower, then slept for an hour or so and finally I started feeling more like a human being and grabbed some food.


The conditions were tough for me. Also, there was no swim (my strongest event) and due to my size (6'3", 190 lbs), the wind on the bike course is particularly detrimental.

Add on top of this the poor pacing on the bike and you have a recipe for disaster. I will have to come back next year to redeem myself!


The course difficulty was fine, it was the wind that made this super tough for me. I can't really rate the race, since without the swim I did not get the experience I was looking for. I know this is not the organizers fault and I think they did a great job otherwise.

Also, since I was feeling terrible I had no chance to enjoy the post-race activities so it it hard for me to assess those as well.