"How about Rev3 Quassy 70.3" they said

Earlier this year while I was sitting at work a co-worker came and said, let's do a race together. Without much thought I agreed. Of course telling her "we are both in" while at it. Long and behold a few weeks later she comes back and tells me "found it! Let's do Quassy". Once again without much thought I agreed.  Didn't really check the race site much, normally we don't really obsess about routes or elevations or much of anything. It is one of those things that we can't control or I guess we could but then we wouldn't be doing any races if we limit them to certain stats. We put it in our plan, talked to our coach about our year plan and training started.

The winter this year in NY (where we live) was weird. We had warm days, cold days, really cold days, not a whole lot of snow, more cold days, rainy days and then spring finally decided to make an appearance. We were able to put some decent miles on the bike, a lot of movies were watched in the basement and the threadmill got plenty of use. When it gets dark before 5:00 you simply gotta get it done somehow. We were able to do a few rides outside with some hills and we are glad we did them. Wished we had done more but it was all we could do. We weren't going to worry about it. Our swims did get a lot more consistent, so we saw a lot of progress there. Res for a change had to travel a lot. She was pretty much away for about a month and a half where here training was close to minimal. Her miles were done on foot more than anything and racking up some airline miles that's for sure. 

So with the training done. Or as done as we were going to get it done we departed to Middlebury, CT. It is about 1:20 min from home which is very convenient. We are so used to driving at least 3 hrs to a big race. We had of course by race time checked the elevation on the bike and run but we knew we could tackle it, it wasn't going to be pretty but oh well... Again we didn't control that, we could control the outcome. We had an strategy and it was let's go have fun. It will hurt but we are used to it. We didn't even read many reports from previous races. We joked with my friend about why she likes hills so much but we rolled with it. Res was a little nervous about it, but we said if we finish good if we don't is ok too. Of course we will push to finish but won't be the end of the world if we don't. We left it all out there. 

Happy Finisher

We started the weekend by cheering one of my new athletes on Saturday. She had signed up for the Olympic distance. She had done a sprint before and her training was a bit iffy. She didn't pull the trigger until about 5 weeks ago and her work made her pretty much miss a lot of workouts. She had done a marathon in the spring so she had a good base and was able to put a few long rides during the weekends. We knew it was going to hurt and I don't endorse doing that for anyone. We talked about the race and had a plan for it. She has a 70.3 at the end of the year so this was a good wake up call to respect the distance. This isn't a 5k :). 

Foggy Start... swim delay

Saturday was clear skies, sunny, hot, good weather. Here is the kicker, storms rolled overnight. Temp dropped 20 deg. , rained overnight, no wind luckily. Again one of those things not in our control.  Race people said that if it was thundering they will pull the plug. We went for it. Set up our transition, air in the tires at 80 and off we went. We actually slept for 40 more min in the car before we walked to the swim start. 

I was the first swim wave. I wanted to see how my swim how gotten. Usually I do pretty good in the pool but fall apart in open water. I had very solid swims in the pool so this was a true test. I was aiming for sub 40' and came in at 39'20" #winning. I stayed a little wide from the bouys and added maybe 100-200 yards which was maybe 3', this makes me happy because I am aiming for a 35' swim so I'm close. 

Got out of transition, I took my time and also taking my wetsuit off. No strippers at this race. Gotta love BodySlide which makes it very easy to take off. 

Off on the bike I wanted to be safe. Wet roads are something that I respect as I have whipped out before on them. I have had good rides recently with our club so I knew I was ok with the hills. However it took me about 5 miles to get a good rythm going. Maybe because you go up as you come out and the heart rate gets high. I looked at that and talked my self into getting a good rythm. Lowered my HR and also was watching my power. I didn't want to hit more than 150W. So finally got the legs spinning and tackled those hills. At one point it got worried because I was actually off the saddle and the rear wheel started spinning and no traction. Good thing was that since I was on the road bike I would pass all the fancy Tri rigs going up but they would pass me going down. I was playing it too safe on the downhills too. A lot of turns at the end of those didn't really help. So I was not going to risk a crash for a non PR. I did my own thing. Didn't pay attn to my speed much. I watched those watts and tried to enjoy the ride. It finally dried up a little at around mike 40 so I just pushed the last hour to take it home. 

looking strong for a little bit

Back in transition I actually had a pretty fast one. Under 1:30. While it is a small transition I think it was pretty fast and I thought I was rusty in my transitions. Always helps to keep it simple. Was matter of putting my shoes, hat and belt on and off I went. I didn't carry any nutrition with me on the run. I wanted to use whatever was on course. Only thing I took was my Base salt vial. 

The run... While I kept the bike safe I wanted to maintain a nice steady pace on the run. My goal was a 9:30 or so which I settled on relatively quick. The first 3-4 miles are somewhat downhill but after that it gets real. I ran with another guy the first half almost to mile 7, was happy with the first 10k right under 1:00. Then all hills were thrown at us. I started walking more and more. At mile 8  I met a couple of other guys which were local and knew the course pretty good. They knew we had a harder hill coming at around mile 10 so they had an strategy to jog to a point and then walk the hardest part. I was fine with that. Then from there there is only one more hill and its almost downhill to the end. We started getting a pretty hard rain at mile 9 or so but it wasnt actually that bad. So didn't mind it. 

as usual... best smile

The finish at Quassy is pretty cool. Something that I hadn't seen in other races which is that the Shute goes through the village. Only difference here was that it was pouring so there weren't many people out. Different from Saturday where there were tons of people cheering people in. 

Total finish time wasn't the fastest. Actually was the 3rd out of the 5 I've done. The swim and run were both PRs but the bike was pretty brutal and considering the conditions of the rain  and the close to 4,000 ft of elevation was one of those that I knew I wasn't going to PR at. In all, I'm pretty happy with the results. This is a race to do for sure. Not for the weak of heart. To PR definitely a good bike preparation is needed. I think if the roads were better I could've done more damage but maybe paying the price on the run. So I guess it all worked out at the end of the day. 

kids bikes for their tri... wished mine had training wheels sometimes

In general Rev3 is a pretty good Tri company. The event was very well organized, both days seemed to run very smooth. We kinda did a Rev3 event last year at Atlantic City before it was bought by Ironman but it has the Challenge brand so we wanted to give the opportunity to Rev3 as a comeback. While they call it a small race, it isn't a small event. Between both days they have close to 1800 athletes and they have a few race formats. Olympic, 70.3, relay, aqua bike. So there is a little for everyone. Even there is a Olympic and 70.3 special which you compete in both distances on both days. The post race meal was pretty awesome. Not the cold pizza that we are used to. They had hotdogs, fries, burgers, pasta. Big shout out to the volunteers. They rocked totally. They were so helpful on the bike course. The run was pretty good, every mile we had an aid station and everyone was cheering and ready for us. Even the cops through the course were pretty amazing, see the link below of the cop that had the  squad car with The Eye of the Tiger song on to cheer us on. 

With that Quassy is done. Recovery week is done and we are off do our training for Cartagena 70.3 in 24 weeks. 

Betty Sisters

As for Res she rocked it too. She had a PR on her swim and a PR on her run too. She had a small chain drop that cost her a couple of minutes to get back on but she managed to stay on track and tackled the hills like a boss. Best of all she snitched the 1st place military female of the race. 

Female Military Champ :)