The hills are alive - Rev 3 Quassy

So the title should say it all.  This course is legit. 

First, the weather, all week my trusty lying weather app had been saying it was going to cool down for Sunday, low 70's with some clouds and less humidity.  This of course, was not the case come race morning.  First thing I checked when I woke up at 3:45 was the weather, mid 80's and typical New England summer time humidity.  Awesome.  I wasn't going to let the thought of all that Perform I was going to have consume damper my mood though.  I was feeling great, my run had been turning an amazing corner the 3 weeks leading up to this day and I was two lbs lighter than at any other time last year. 

Steve and I got to transition right at 5, and all of a sudden it was right before 7 am and the pros were taking off.  My wave was at 7:30 and Steve's wave was at 7:50.  At 7:15 I started to get in a nice warm up, the water was amazing, 70ish.  It's amazing how sitting on a pool deck at 6 am and dreading getting into the freezing cold 82 degree pool, yet come race morning, I wish for something in the 60's.  My swim was awesome for me, finally a swim time I could smile about when I saw my watch, 36:03.  What makes this even more impressive is the fact that according to my Garmin I swam 1.45 miles, in a swim that's supposed to be 1.2.  My navigation skills are horrific, everytime I would look up I knew I was swimming anything but straight! 

Onto the bike, knowing I had a 20 minute head start on Steve I was secretly hoping to get to the first aid station before he caught up to me, this was at mile 15.9, I saw him around mile 20, sweet!  I was pushing hard up the hills and trying to gain time going down them, I improved on my bike time from last year by over 15 minutes, this is such a huge improvement for me and my lack of cycling muscles.  Around 90 minutes in, I started to feel GI issues going on, so for the whole time on the bike I was only able to consume 4 bottles of Perform, which is not ideal for me.  It was so hot out there and I had sweat dripping in my eyes, everytime I tried to wipe it out, more sweat would go in them.  I usually pee at 90 mins in and I didn't pee until around mile 45 and it was a forced little dribble.  Good times.

Onto the run, I knew there was a potty stop between miles 1 and 2 and I just NEEDED to get there, stopped and ahhh, finally felt better.  I started to run after grabbing three cups of ice, two for my sports bra and one I would hold in my hands and pop in my mouth at points.  The ice melted within 5 minutes.  Literally 5 minutes.  Even after the bathroom break it took until about mile 3 for my stomach to feel good and more normal.  I was taking in water at the aide stations until mile 8 when I tried the gatorade endurance they had, and within 2 minutes I started feeling nice GI pains again, so after that it was back to water.  My run was almost a minute slower than last years, which I can live with, given my nice improvement on the bike.  All and all, I improved my time by 16:17 over last year!

I will sum up Steve's race with this: he did not pee until Monday morning around 10 am.  Enough said.

On the transition front, my T times were awful, much slower than last year.  Not off to a good start on the T battle with Steve!

Rev 3 puts on a great race, they really pay attention to all the details, like having ice and cold drinks at every aide station.

I want to take a quick minute to give a huge shout out to my friend Tim, http://abrandnewfocus.tumblr.com/ he's been putting in a ton of hard work and he completed the Tough Mudder Boston (which was actually held in the mountains in NH) the day before Quassy. I posted a video on my twitter of him crossing the finish line on his own power. I saw a still photo of it race morning before I started, and I usually will look at Tim's blog or FB page race morning for that little extra dose of motivation. It always puts things into perspective and when I wanted to go jump into a dirty pond to cool off while on the run, that image came into my head of Tim. This is a video of part of the Tough Mudder and Tim's team.

Post Quassy we spent last week relaxing, drinking a beer at the end of the Bruins games celebrating their victory over the Penuins and the biggest baby in hockey, Crosby.  Now, it's onto the Stanley Cup Finals, which is the most exciting thing in sports.  Hockey players like Campbell who took a puck to the ankle and ended up breaking his leg while blocking a shot in a key PK in Game 3, yet continued to stay on the ice for a minute make people like Lebron James look like a baby penguin.  Except baby penguins are much, much cuter.  Anywaysss, here are some pictures from the weekend!

Awesome transition set up by Rev 3

Steve's all done!

Me looking for a tub of ice to jump into

Weeeee!

Steve finishing the bike

Can barely see me starting the run, my younger brother captured this moment.

We have Vineman 70.3 in five short weeks!!  Post race we will be spending the entire week in wine country, hiking through the red woods and eating our way through San Fran!