Rev3 Cedar Point full distance 140.6 race report

Wow! What a race! This is the race that finally motivated me to start the blog I've been talking about for ages. I had an amazing 16.5 hour experience on the course and hfad fun every step of the way. Well – almost every step.. read on J

First of all, I want to thank two people who helped to make it happen for me: my husband Sam who trained with me for the past 11 weeks and made me get up every morning to run-bike-swim my butt off getting semi-ready for my first triathlon ever! Second huge thanks goes to Stephanie Patten, whom I first met at mile 55 of the race. Stephanie found me nauseated and ready to quit and offered to get me to the finish line at mile 140.6, and she did. I am honored to have met such a wonderful person.

Also, thanks to all the amazing and awesome volunteers of Rev3 for all their enthusiasm and hard work, especially to ‘Curly’ Chris at mile 9/22 aid station who made a hand-stand for us every time we ran by, and all the other awesome people at the aid stations who helped to make this race a blast.

Fair warning folks, this is going to be long!

Rev3 Cedar Point full distance training

First, some background on my experience. I’ve completed a couple of marathons and ultra distance running races (50km and over), but I have never completed a single triathlon. I had no prior swimming experience and minimal biking experience (limited to a few slow rides last year). I did all my running training with Rogue Running in Austin (coach Mark Enstone’s group) and I ran somewhere around 30 miles each week, which was manageable if a little low compared to ultra distance training. Running with Rogue is always a joy and I had a lot of fun. During the first 8 weeks (out of 11) of training, I biked twice a week, one short 15 mile ride and one long ride between 30 and 70 miles. The last 3 weeks I panicked a little bit and joined Pure Austin PAC team and did bike rides with their awesome coaches – Shawn Bostad and Michelle something. Their indoor cycling PAC classes are intense and exhilarating – I noticed a significant increase in speed after only about 2 weeks there.

My swimming training is a different story; until training for Rev3, I only knew how to swim breast stroke so I had to pick up a book (literally; the book’s called Total Immersion Swimming) and relearn how to swim using the front crawl. I started with a dozen or so drills until I could make it across the pool, then worked on my endurance. I only got the hang of the front crawl a few weeks before the race. After I joined PAC three weeks before the race, I practiced at their lake or pool every day for three weeks, as I was seriously worried about missing the swim cutoff (2 hours and 20 minutes for 2.4 miles.)

Ok – now the race!

A) The swim: 2 hours 4 minutes, 2.4 miles

The morning of Sept. 11 (the race day) the water was very calm, which was a nice surprise, compared to two days ago where we had 6 foot waves. There was some black muck in the water and getting past it and into the water was gross, but once we were in it was fine. The mass start was nothing like what I had expected from hearing some stories about triathlons. I held back as I didn’t want people to swim over me, and soon there were only 3 or 4 of us in a small group swimming at a steady pace, which was pleasant. We even exchanged some words of encouragement from time to time and chatted a little bit as we were taking our breastroke breaks. I expected to be part of the back of the pack during the swim, and I was happy to not be alone and not get stomped by other swimmers coming from behind. That being said, if we had different weather and the water wasn’t so calm, I think we all would have been in a bit of trouble with the cut-off times. I alternated between front crawl (70%) and breast stroke (30%), and on the second half I really hit my stride and enjoyed the rest of the swim.

B) The bike: 7 hours 22 minutes, 112 miles. Avg pace –15.14 mph

         

I stumbled out of the water and back through the muck, dizzy and a little surprised at what lay in store for my first transition. We were ushered down a long walkway flanked by volunteers. Two volunteers, cheering and clapping, beckoned me over and told me to sit down on the ground, then they tugged my wetsuit off while I laid on the ground. Still dizzy, I grabbed some water and jogged to the transition area. I grabbed my clothing bag and headed to the changing tent, only to find out that I had the whole changing tent and two volunteers to myself. They helped me dig through my stuff, put on my sunscreen, pack my wet clothes neatly, and saw me off on the bike. 

I headed out very strong and really excited that I made the swim cutoff. The first 10 miles I felt very strong and the scenery going out of Cedar Point was beautiful. At mile 10 or so I choked on a chocolate covered pretzel and coughed for a good 5 minutes.  Somehow when I was choking I managed to do something to my back muscles, and every time I breathed in I felt a poking pain in my throat. Oh well. At about mile 25, I started feeling nauseous; it was probably because I hadn’t been eating enough and my blood sugar was low. I tried to eat a little but the nausea would not go away. It started getting worse but I pushed through, knowing it would probably get better at some point. The roads were flat, and we had a lot of tailwind, so I could maintain a decent pace. By mile 55 I was still nauseous and now having doubts about finishing. I stopped, ate some Twix bars and Clif Shot Bloks and a piece of banana, hoping things would get better, but not feeling it.

Somewhere around mile 55 two people joined me biking right behind me, who I later found out were Stephanie Patten and Brian Forrester.  Brian said that they were there to help me push through, and Stephanie added some words of encouragement. Their company was very welcome. Stephanie explained that they were working on the course to help athletes stay ahead of the cutoffs and keep them company. Brian I believe is from all3sports and Stephanie’s family owns Rev3 (her husband Charlie is the CEO of Rev3). Brian took off soon to pace other athletes and Stephanie stayed riding behind me. She told me I had to keep above 15 miles to be safe on the cutoffs. As we started chatting, my stomach started feeling better and I began to regain some of my energy. The time went by fast with Stephanie around and she was doing an amazing job to turn the mood from ‘near quitting’ to high again. Soon enough we were at the town of Milan, where we saw my husband Sam waiting there for us. It was very nice to see Sam and he ran along next to us at the aid station, giving us words of encouragement.

The miles went by and Stephanie was a great help every step of the way; she kept track of the split times and kept pushing me to keep a good pace. < Note about pedaling fast on downhill so you can crest the uphill > The weather was fantastic too and the wind seemed to turn with us on the way back to the park and we had a lot of tail wind. We ended up arriving at least a half hour earlier than I predicted and I was still riding strong at the end. At the end of the day all 5 of my splits were almost exactly the same pace, at just under 15.5mph!

C) Run: 6 hours 30 minutes, 26.2 miles

I was very happy that Stephanie decided to stay with me through the run. I knew that the companionship was what I needed to push through the evening and finish. We changed clothes in the transition and headed out soon. First we saw Charlie, Stephanie’s husband, when heading out of the station, and I was honored to meet him as well after having the pleasure biking for about 57 miles with Stephanie. 200 yards later we saw Sam cheering on us and we exchanged a kiss. And then it was time to run. The first mile felt very strange. I didn't get a chance to do any "bricks" (bike-run training sessions) so the sensation was completely new to me. If you have done a triathlon before, you know how it feels trying to run after spending over 7 hours on the bike. It felt like my legs and arms and lungs were all moving at different speeds and I couldn't decide which one to follow. I could not get my mind into running, with my legs feeling strange and out of control I just couldn’t get myself to relax and get "in the run". Surprisingly, we were not running slow at all, our first mile was about 9:30 minute pace, but we decided to take an occasional 2 minute walking break to stay fresh. There were aid stations every mile on the course stocked with bananas, pretzels, gu and Gatorade and some of them also had coke and chicken soup or orange slices.

Between the walking breaks and the aid stations at every mile, we ended up walking a good chunk of the way. At mile 2, the volunteers offered us a couple slices of pizza, and both Stephanie and I were very grateful to have food other than Gu and bananas. I thought it was bizarre  and hilarious walking out of the aid station eating pizza and sipping coke, but that pizza was a life-saver.

I did not have a time goal in mind for the run at all. I wanted to enjoy the evening and finish happy. I didn’t care if I finished the run in 4 or 7 hours, as long as I finished before midnight. Stephanie and I decided that we should move faster than 4 miles per hour and keep a good mix of jogging and walking. We both had smiles on our faces and kept moving forward. We saw many runners who looked exhausted; it got a little warm in the afternoon but having trained in Texas, temperatures in the 80’s are not so much of an issue for me. Soon we were done with the first 13.1 loop of the marathon and were heading out of CP for the second loop. The views of the sunset in the bay area were stunning, and it was beautifully breezy evening. It was a true joy to run, even after a full day of swim-bike-running 127 miles and 13.1 to go. Stephanie was going very strong and I secretly admired her crazy fitness – considering she didn’t train for this race and was able to do close to 70% of it just pacing.

Soon the night fell, and the temperature was still in the low 70’s, breezy, with a full moon. What a beautiful night. We stopped frequently, ate, drank, and walked a lot, chatting and cheering on other runners the whole time. I wasn’t concerned at all about our pace, at this point I wanted to sustain the good happy mood and not finish in pain and exhaustion. We saw Chris again at mile 20 on an out-and-back section of the course and he joined us when we saw him again at mile 22 to run/walk the last 4 miles with us to the finish line. I enjoyed listening to Stephanie and Chris chatting about rev3  and races and had fun walking.  Sam was waiting for us near the finish line and joined us for the finish line run. We all ran together through the finish line party peeps cheering and waving their glowsticks. 

I told you it would be long J. Rev3 Cedar Point will be in my heart, and hopefully I will be able to come next year and do it again?

Notes on the race

Pros

1. Flat and beautiful course. Probably very fast compared to other races.

2. Revolution3 has amazing atmosphere; when you see people having a blast cheering at the aid stations, it does help.

3. Plenty of volunteers everywhere! I was surprised how much help we got every step of the way – from people helping you out of your wetsuit , catching your bike, helping you change, digging through your transition bag, helping you fill your bottles at every aid station.

4. Discount tickets for CP. Originally it looked like they were going to get a deal for a free passes to CP and having told my a couple friends that may be the case I was disappointed that it wasn’t the case, nonetheless the deal that rev3 got with CP was even better; $20 ticket on Friday – but open2 hours for athletes, friends and family only. Now – if you know what kind of monsterous roller coasters there are at Cedar Point (six flags is literally nothing compared to CP), and you love to ride, you’ll love the fact that you don’t have to wait any lines. There were about 10 or 20 of us at Dragster – the fastest roller coaster in the world.

5. I registered 2 or 3 weeks before the race without a problem.. pretty sure you can’t do that for Ironman. I also heard that they have pretty relaxed refund policies if you can’t make the race.

Cons

Please take my cons with a great grain of salt as I have never done a single triathlon before, but –  I would suggest adding some other fruit to the aid stations. There is only that many banana halves you can eat, after about 20 of them I swear I will never eat a banana again.http://rev3tri.com