Revolution3 Race Recap: Ouch
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 07:36AM Turns out that Dom is right -- never give up! That certainly played true in my case for the Rev3 Half IM this past weekend, though I wouldn't discover that until AFTER the race.
Like everyone else (perhaps the rest of the TT crew will post their views of the race as well), I showed up with a bit of trepidation about the race and the course. I'd been over the bike course but not the run course, and while I'd heard it was bad, I figured "How bad could it be?" Well, after a decent (for me) swim and a good but not over-the-top bike, I found out. The run is a sadist's dream. After 3500ft of climbing on the bike including the wonderful set of rollers in the last few miles, the run starts out an an "easy" downhill for about 2 miles. My quads were shot at the START of the run, and the downs just killed (especially one steep decline that I had to kind of tiptoe down). THEN, you climb for about 4 miles to the turnaround and get to go down again. Yikes! While my legs had loosened up a bit and possibly the salt tabs, coke, gatorade, cera, etc. I took in was helping, I was clearly shufflling. But nothing prepared me for the nightmare of the last mile's climb. By that point, though, I knew I was in at least 2nd place in my AG (45-49) and, lo and behold, I spied another old guy in front of me at the top of the hill. While I was fairly happy at that point just to be finishing in second, I was a bit miffed to be that close and not be able to catch him.
After the race, while I was trying to find my lost quads and replace the patch of skin that had rubbed off my achilles, I found the guy ahead of me. Sure enough, he had me by 41 seconds. I had to leave the race right away, but later I received some news -- he'd been penalized (drafting?) and I'd won the AG! Suddenly the ridiculously difficult 4:54 effort seemed a bit more worth it, and I was quite happy I pressed through the pain of the first few miles of the run to finish as well as I could.
Congrats to the TT relay team, Val, Mitch (sorry) and everyone else that raced on what pro winner Matt Reed called the hardest course he'd ever been on (yet still managed to go 3:59 somehow - yikes).
Reader Comments (1)
Nice race, Dave! Good luck at Alcatraz!