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Poor Form WTC

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

Ironman races have become a hugely powerful marketing machine. Powerful to the point where normal people can cross their finish line and inspire people for the rest of their lives, even if they don’t know anything about triathlon. Powerful to the point where pro athletes can help put food on their table just by racing with corporate logos splashed all over their kits. (Yes, there is more to the financial side of being a sponsored athlete, but you get the point.)

Recently, Ironman decided to take a little editorial control over what they allow athletes to promote.

Notice anything different between these pictures?
The right is a picture of a poster from Ironman Louisville. The left is the original of Hillary Biscay racing IM Brazil earlier this year.

While the folks at Rev3 had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, it is definitely poor form on the part of WTC. Is WTC scared? To be honest, I have no idea why. Rev3 is still a really young company and has to market the hell out of every race new they do just to get athletes to the swim start. Ironman, on the other hand, can announce a new race and with seemingly zero promotion, they sell the damn thing out. Yet they still stoop so low as to photoshop sponsor logos off of the uniform of one of their most visible athletes?

Shenanigans.

While I’ve had some less than pleasant things to say about WTC, the Rev3 crew has always been pretty professional about their competition with the big red M. They’ve always been very honest in admitting that within the big world of triathlon, they are still a relatively small fish. They may have big aspirations, but fulfilling those takes time. They may put on races with a big feel and world-class production, but they have nowhere near the industry impact that the Ironman brand does (yet).

That is why I was extra surprised to see them sticking gum in Rev3′s hair like a school yard bully.

Earlier this year, WTC named a new CEO, which was really uniquely positioned from a communications perspective. I couldn’t help but interpret the announcement of hiring a “nice guy” to help balance the “cut throat – win at all costs businessman” that is the WTC’s previous CEO and now President. If the WTC is genuinely trying to change their image by being more of a “nice guy” they’ve got a long way to go to scrub the culture of douche-bag-ness from their company.

Support the good guys.

You F with our logos. We win the whole fing race.

How do you like that form?

(Photo credit to the original Hillary Biscay picture from IM Brazil: Jaime Vigaray)

UPDATE:

Dan Empfield over at Slowtwitch covered this story. You can read his article here: http://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/Hillary_Biscay_Digitally_Remastered_2298.html

While Dan does some good reporting, I think he skirts around the issue a little. He quotes at WTC spokesperson as saying…

“We do not feel that we should be promoting competing race series. They certainly are not promoting our races.”

Immediately followed by…

“We are protective of our brands and partners. But the athletes are our partners too. Our ambitions do not blind us to the needs of those in our industry, our athletes and their sponsors inclusive.”

If WTC considers pros as their partners, but still justifies scrubbing every single sponsor from a photo of Maik Twelsiek in the Louisville athlete guide, imagine what they’d be okay with if they didn’t like us so much.

Or maybe they just really don’t like Maik and Hillary…

Tags: Ironman, rev3 triathlon, revolution 3 triathlon, Triathlon, wtc | Posted in Ironman, Triathlon | 15 Comments »

Rev3 Quassy Olympic Race Report

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Last weekend was once again one of my favorite weekends of the year. REV3 QUASSY!

A killer course, hanging out with my Trakkers, Rev3 and CREW friends and all is right in the world. I initially signed up for this race back in 2009 because it was a “homecoming” for me, just 30 minutes from where I grew up and where my parents still live. This time around, my whole family was out of town so I adopted the Trakkers/Rev3 crew as my family for the weekend and joined the slumber party over at Laura’s house.

With my epic +2 week cold last month and zero training during that time, I wasn’t expecting any miracles. I actually had NO idea how I was going to do. I couldn’t even give Sam predictions on when she should watch out for me to cross the line. I was just hoping to finish under 3 hours/not embarrass myself and have fun while doing it.

But let’s talk about the race.

Pre-Race

I woke up at 5:00 after a “meh” sleep and started mixing up my nutrition bottles and packing the car. Normally I eat cereal every morning as soon as I get up, and I do the same thing before races to avoid giving my stomach any surprises. Unfortunately this morning my stomach was throwing ME a surprise. It wasn’t happy. Instead of trying to force down milk and cereal that might not be so easy to digest, I went with my plan B. Race nutrition as breakfast.

I mixed up a flask of EFS, a serving of PreRace and threw a flask of Liquid Shot into my pocket. I slowly slurped on each as I drove to Quassy and got ready to race. My stomach was happy. I got some high quality calories and sugars in me. I was hydrated. All was right with the world.

Rev3 hooked me up with an HD video camera to film the bike course. It was a little added pressure, but it is a good thing I’m a (slightly) better cyclist than swimmer and figured I’d be passing a few fish out there on the bike course and I wouldn’t look like a chump. It was also a little added incentive to stay honest and not draft (not that I do that in the first place). I checked out the rig that they set up on my bike over night and was more worried/excited about coming back with some cool footage than a solid race time.

I socialized a little with some of teammates and friends, lubed up on Tri-Slide, hopped into my wetsuit and made my way to the swim start. I was feeling completely relaxed. No pre-race jitters. Just ready for a nice hard workout with a few hundred of my closest friends.

The Swim

I was one of the first waves and made my way through the corral. I lined up on the beach in the very back of the pack, dead center, without a care in the world. Clearly I didn’t have much of a strategy for the swim start. I’m no fish, but I was faster than a lot of guys that lined up ahead of me and had to battle my way through them for the first third of the swim. It was nice having feet to follow and leapfrog, but these feet were to slow to follow and didn’t do me too much good.

Other than that, I felt great and was LOVING my first race in my new TYR Hurricane 5. I never had a complaint about my old suit, but this thing feels SO much better. My shoulders felt so free, unrestricted and speedy. Once I finally zig zagged my way through the packs, I made my way to some open water, fell into a nice pace and was able to dial up the effort a little. Towards the end of the swim course, I had two guys on either shoulder and we were battling it out. We were literally inches from each other (unfortunately I was in the middle) but managed to hold a straight line and not bash each other’s heads in as we approached the finish.

I crawled out of the water in a decent time. Not my best, but good despite my poor choice in starting positions. (What a rookie mistake.) I even spotted Sam as I ran up the grass through transition and gave her a big smile.

Time: 27:13 (1:52 min/100m)

The Bike

A speedy transition and I was off on course. It was a little cool to start, but easily warmed up. For the first 10 miles or so, my teammate Josh and I swapped places. It was good to have a friendly face out there. I knew that is a strong cyclist, so if I could stay with him for a while (without blowing up) I’d be in a good place. We even had a little parade for a while between Josh in front, me in the middle and another teammate Mark behind me (all legal distances). We swallowed up some guy who yelled out “Where is Trakkers from anyway?!” I just responded “EVERYWHERE! I’m Boston. Georgia is up ahead. New York is behind me!”

Triathlon is definitely an individual sport, but it is a blast racing with a team full of friends.

Despite a hilly course, my avg speed was +20mph for a while. Not what I was expecting, but I felt strong and went with it. My favorite part was some of the downhills. I hit +45mph at least three times and LOVED it. I was yelling out the speeds from my bike computer so that when I reviewed the footage from the HD camera under my aerobars I could see what it looks like to go that fast on camera. Eventually the fast descents wiggled away the spoke magnet on my front wheel so I couldn’t tell how fast I was going anymore. Bummer. I gotta glue that sucker in place.

A good ride. Not a major breakthrough, but I was REALLY surprised how much bike fitness stuck with me this year. I guess I’m a little stronger than I thought.

Time: 1:19:30 (19.38mph)

The Run

While in HIMs, I usually let my legs slowly settle into running again before I dial it up to my race pace, I decided to just not listen to my legs, stick to my race pace and let them adjust. I t worked too! I stick to low 7:00 min/miles for the first 2-3 miles and felt good.

Then the hills came. And kept coming. They were brutal. I cried. But just a little. And they were masked in sweat so no one noticed and it was okay. They definitely took a toll on my legs, but I still felt alright and kept pushing through. The one thing about both the Oly and HalfRev run courses at Quassy is that they both finish the same. One. Big. Nasty. Hill. You can just barely hear the music in the distance to motivate you up it, but it is KILLER. It totally makes you work for it. But after that, it is flat and wide open all the way to the finish.

Happiness.

Time: 51:25 (8:18 min/mile)

Total: 2:42:02

I was only :30 seconds off of my PR. And on the hardest Oly course that I have ever done! Clearly a major surprise given my expectations. A good time, a great race and I can’t wait to race it again next year.

Tags: olympic triathlon, quassy, rev3 quassy, rev3 triathlon | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon | 10 Comments »

Rev3 Cedar Point: Race Report

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Race morning had officially arrived. After a surprisingly good sleep, I was up, hit the bathroom and downed a bottle of EFS and some Clif Shot Bloks.

I decided that the whole day was going to be focused on two main ideas:

Take the whole day one mile at a time
Enjoy every mile of my only first Ironman

Those two mantras would end up driving me for the next 140.6 miles.

Other than a minor pre-dawn freakout in transition area. I was able to keep a pretty level head as I set up my bike, organized my transition area and filled up my nutrition bottles. I was pretty happy and surprised with my attitude. I’ve been a LOT more nervous for a LOT shorter races.

I’m not sure what it was, but I was just ready to race, get out there and start tearing up the course.

Heading over to the swim start and patiently waiting for the gun to go off. Sam was an amazing sherpa and helped me stay cool calm and collected up until the second I had to leave her and dive head first into the water. Just as I was starting to head through the start gate, she handed me her cell phone. It was my mom calling from Connecticut to give me some last minute last minute well wishes. Hearing how proud she was of me to just have made it to the start line brought such a big smile to my face that I couldn’t even muster up any response beyond “Thanks Mom!” before I handed the phone back to Sam and pointed myself towards shore and the start of the race.

Swim:

The plan was to keep it nice and relaxed and not to threaten the race before I even headed out on the bike. All of the FullRev athletes (about 450 of us) went off in one big mass start. No matter how far back you hung in the pack, you were bound to run into some people. I landed some unintentional kicks an punches and took my share as well, but it eventually spread out and allowed me to focus on keeping an even pace and smooth form instead of dodging kicks to the scull.

The first loop went pretty smoothly. I even had to pee and just let it rip instead of waiting until I was out on the bike. I’d peed in my wetsuit plenty of times before, but never while actually swimming. It was always while standing in the water waiting for the gun to go off.

I figured it was a good sign that I started the race well hydrated. It is good to know the digestive system is working and doing its thing, even if nature calls when I’m only 1 mile into the race.

First loop: 41:17 (2:08/100 m)

The second loop was a little more of the same. My arms felt strong all the way through and I was having a blast. Nature even called AGAIN! I didn’t even feel like I was drinking a ton on race morning, but just like the first time, I just went with it. My pace did slow a little bit, but I exited the water feeling awesome. My time was right in the middle of my prediction and I was psyched to start the bike.

See? I’m even turning around to smile and wave to Sam as I exit the water. I told you I was having a blast out there.

Second loop: 43:19 (2:15/100 m)

Total swim time: 1:24:36

Bike:

I didn’t have any major expectations for the bike. I knew that it was probably going to be my strongest sport of the day. I just wanted to get out there, hold a nice even pace and start the run feeling good.

The course was WAY flatter than anywhere I’d ever raced, but it was also WAY windier than anywhere I’d ever raced so it was tough for me to make any sort of average speed expectations. I just went out there and did my thang.

The bike started with plenty of drinking straight water to make sure that my stomach stayed as happy as it was during the swim and was processing whatever I threw down my gullet. The first bike pee came around mile 25 and I was as happy as a clam.

As we made a turn and headed West, I started FLYING. I had a nice tailwind and a nice clean stretch of flat road ahead of me. It was beautiful. I was cruising at between 22 and 23 mph and barely working for it.

That was until I took the next turn at around mile 35. From then on it was a constant battle with the wind. No matter where the course turned, it felt like the wind was following me. No matter how aero I tried to get, I was constantly battling the wind. Doing 13 mph (and working hard for it) on a nice flat even road definitely puts things into perspective after ticking off all of those miles at 22 mph with a tail wind.

I figured there was nothing I could do about the wind and just kept an even effort level. Eat, breathe, drink, pee and repeat. The course was beautiful and I tried to just soak it in as much as I could.

I got off the bike happy with how things went and psyched to slip on my Saucony Paramounts and start running.

Time: 6:14:43 (17.93 pmh)

Snuck a little good luck chat with Sam before heading into the changing tent and off on the marathon.

Run:

I threw on my run gear, filled up my water bottle and headed out on my way.

My run plan was to sip on just water for the first 20-30 minutes until my HR settled and I could start taking in calories without letting my stomach seize up. Those first three miles felt great and I was slowly ticking off the miles at a nice even pace.

At around the mile 3 mark, I tore open my EFS Liquid Shot flask and took tiny sips each 20 minutes. Unfortunately, that didn’t last too long. By mile 6 I realized that all the water that I was sipping on was just sloshing around in my gut. Crap. I wasn’t really pushing the pace, so the only real decision to make was to start walking. It was MUCH sooner in the marathon than I had expected to have to walk, but I knew that I didn’t have the strength to grit and bear it through another 20 miles of running without being able to absorb a single carb, electrolyte or ounce of water.

Miles 6-10 were slow and painful and included a lot of walking but eventually I could feel my stomach emptying and the next trip to the port-o-potty was by far my favorite of the day. It was an awesome sign that my stomach was functioning again and taking in the goodies I was tossing down.

My run performance was quickly turning out to be way less spectacular than I had hoped, but it was cool. I run walked and made some friends along the way. Meredith’s husband Dave caught up to me and we ran together for a while for a while before he left me in the dust. Then I ran by some girls at an aid station and over heard them say “What, you aren’t going to complement him on his butt?” They definitely didn’t think that I heard them so I caught them off guard when I stopped, struck a pose and called out “What, nothing?!”

After getting their approval, I proceeded to knock off the rest of the marathon, mile by mile. My pace got slower and slower and my quads were increasing amounts of pain, but I kept on ticking off the miles. Let me tell you, I’ve never big a big fan of all that random stuff that they have at aid stations. I’m usually just a gel and sports drink kind of guy, but a cup of grapes at mile 20 of an ironman marathon may be one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted.

For the last few miles, I made a new friend from Louisville, KY and we chatted it up, took run/walk breaks together and kept on moving forward. I can’t remember his name, but having him next to me for those last miles was perfect. It helped distract myself from my legs as they slowly disintegrated beneath me.

As I approached the finish line, I really had no idea how I’d react. To be perfectly honest, I was an emotional roller coaster and thought that it was entirely possible that I’d cross the line sobbing like a baby with tears streaming from my face. Or maybe I’d have some triumphant primal scream as I tore past the finish line.

In reality, I was too busy being being just plain excited to think about anything else. I wasn’t thinking about all the hard training sessions that it took to get me there. I wasn’t thinking about all of the people that helped me get there. I wasn’t thinking about all the things that I did right and all the things that I did wrong during the race. I wasn’t thinking about how my legs were screaming in pain and could barely take another step without having me trip and fall over myself.

I wasn’t even thinking about anything as I crossed the line. It was just elated. Huge smile. My mind was just blank, enjoying the physical experience of finishing my first ironman. I think there were just so many possible thoughts rushing thought my head that my mind just shut them down and forced out one gigantic smile.

All is good.

I broke the tape and was immediate surrounded by a hand full of my Trakkers teammates and found Sam waiting just outside the finisher’s area. I shuffled my way over to her and gave her a gigantic hug. Two seconds later we got a call from my mom who was watching me finish on the live video feed. While it sucked not having her there, it was awesome knowing that she was able to track me all day with my Trakkers GPS device (until the battery ran out just before the end of the bike) and watch me live as I crossed the line.

My chip didn’t register over the finish line, so I’m still not 100% sure on my time. I’m guessing that it is somewhere around 13:24, but I’m not all that concerned about it.
I did miss going sub-13:00 like I was secretly hoping for, but I’m not letting it get to me. I handled the obstacles that were thrown my way really well and that is all that I could ask for.

So in the end did I enjoy every mile of my first ironman? Heck yes!

Will I do another one?! Yell yeah! (but just not next year)

This year was filled with tons of epic training adventures, but far more time away from my friends, family and girlfriend than I would have liked. I’ll be definitely returning to the iron distance sometime in the future, but I’m looking forward to some shorter races where it’ll be much easier to balance racing and the rest of life.

Tags: cedar point, fullrev, Ironman, rev3 triathlon | Posted in Cycling, Ironman, Nutrition, Race Reports, Running, Swimming, Triathlon | 13 Comments »

Rev3 Half Iron Race Report

Monday, June 8th, 2009

After packing up the car early on Friday morning, I hit the road right after work on my way down to Connecticut to stay with the family. I grew up only about 20 minutes from the race site, so it was great to spend some time with the family too. While there are a ton of reasons that I was so psyched about this race originally, that was definitely a big one.

That being said, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to stay out until 1a.m. at the bar with my mom, sisters and neighbors. Oh well. I’m not that focused on time anyway. I decided that (for a number of reasons, especially the bad-ass course) this was all about the “experience” this weekend, not the “race.” I still have a lot to learn before I can start getting in the mindset of “racing” 70.3s.

After rolling out of bed early on Saturday with a mild headache, I headed off the the race site to meet up with Team Trakkers for a short run and to man the booth for the morning. Bree Wee, Lisa Mensink and Chris Thomas joined us too. They were very kind to us age groupers and didn’t leave us in the dust.

At the Trakkers booth I was helping set people up with GPS devices so that family/spectators could track them during the race on the Web. Because Trakkers is still in still in early beta, cell service isn’t the greatest on the course, there were plenty of hiccups. Even despite some product issues, people were still really amped to try them out, knowing that there was a good chance that it might not even work at all. It was great to see people supporting the idea behind the product, even when the product hasn’t fully come out yet. Good times and I got to meet some cool people.

After doing a short bike on the run course with Kellie, chatting it up with Christine, Javier and Phil (seriously, who WASN’T a this race?), I called it a day and went home to do final race prep for Sunday’s race.

I went out to dinner with Team Trakkers and Michael Lovato showed up. I’m not usually not one to sit there and drool over pros, and get just as motivated by seeing age groupers do amazing things out on the course, but sitting down and chatting about his plans for prepping for Kona this year was pretty cool.

Dinner with Michael Lovato

Race Day:

I actually got a pretty good night’s sleep! I never sleep that well before a race, so this was an accomplishment in itself. The alarm went off at 4:20 a.m. and I shoveled some cereal, juice and some mini corn muffins down my face, and I was on route to the course by 5:00.

Set up transition. Triple checked everything, set up my Trakkers GPS and off I went to the swim start. Apparently they had changed up the wave times, and I wasn’t sure what time I was supposed to be going, so I didn’t get a chance to warm up. I just splashed some water down my neck into the front of my suit, jumped into the middle/back of the pack and off I went.

The warmup/commute/race strategy worked wonders for me during my two half marathons this year, so that was the plan again today. Keep it extra cool on the swim (don’t worry about maybe giving up a few minutes), warm up on the bike (and never really push the pace, the course is hard enough, it will push back), and once I get my running legs under me THEN I can start racing.

And I even got my own name printed all fancy on my bike rack. Classy, right? Rev3 doesn’t mess around.

Swim:

I started off pretty smooth. My arms/back was a little tight, but not too bad. I definitely wished I had warmed up, but it was fine. If anything it helped me stay nice and slow. Some jerk was constantly tapping on my feet every two strokes. I’m fine with having you draft off of me, but when I am leading the pack, I have no one else to draft from, and I get the feeling that you might have a foot fetish, I’m done. A few breast strokes to the right, I watch him give me the sad puppy dog eyes as he swims past, and I get back into my rhythm.

Time: 37:11 (1:46/100yds)

T1: 4:22

Bike:

Exiting transition I got to use some of my cyclocross skills and did a running mount. Went perfect and I blew right pas that awkward pack of people that always gets clogged up with people who leave their bike in to hard of a gear. SaWEET.

I started off nice and smooth, kept my cool on all the hills and still managed to pass a bunch of people while climbing. I guess my bike has gotten a lot stronger! I normally aim at taking down one bottle per hour and it is a little bit of a chore to stay on schedule. I found myself easily sucking down each bottle in about 50 minutes. I was proud of myself for staying ahead of schedule. Two bottles of Infinit. Two bottles of CeraSport (the course drink). Looking back (only just now) CeraSport has only 160 calories, while my Infinit has about 280. I probably should have sucked down a GU with each bottle, and taken in a fifth bottle. While I kept the pace pretty cool, I just didn’t realize that the hills had taken so much sweat out of me. Stupid mistake. Seriously though, this course was a beast. But if it was easy, they would call it football, right?

I hopped off the bike feeling pretty cool and collected, not yet noticing any dehydration, but sucked down the very last bit of the remaining bottle on my bike. I even popped my feet out of my shoes with .5 miles to go and did a rolling dismount off the bike. Cyclocross definitely made me a lot more confident about my bike handling. Great stuff.

Time: 3:20:06

T2: 2:29

Run:

My run legs weren’t quite there when I started. I kept it super slow and easy to let them switch over, but it wasn’t happening. I took a one minute walk break at each mile marker and sucked down some water. When I was running, I felt good and held a decent pace (mabye around 9:30?). When I decided it was time to start walking, not so hot. Eventually around mile 5 or so, I could feel my pulse pounding in my head. My HR was only 156, but my head was pounding. My lack of water on the bike had fully caught up to me.

I upped my water intake and walked through each water stop to try and offset it, but it was too late. The hurtin’ was in full effect. To make it worse, the run course totally changed from the original course taht I ran. WAY Harder. The good part was that the first 10 miles was one long out and back that wrapped around the lake, so I got to see a bunch of the pro women and everyone else as we ran. It was fun to see everyone and cheer ‘em on. I love the run because it is the only part of racing where you can be a little social and make some friends.

I had to drag myself a little, but I eventually made it to the line. One girl that I caught at mile 12, and hung on my hip for the last mile yelled out “Let’s Do This!” as she sprinted past me. I think we had very different interpretations of “this.” She wanted to kick my ass. I had no interest in sharing the finish line and let her go without a second thought and happily ran straight through the line all by my lonesome.

Run: 2:24:12 (11:00 min/mile)

Total: 6:28:20

It was a whole 28 minutes over my first 70.3 last year where I was undertrained and injured, but I’m still calling this my new PR. Not anywhere near the 6ish hours that I was hoping for, but given how seriously tough the course was, I have no regrets (well, except for the whole nutrition thing). Other than that, It was an awesome experience. (Notice, I said experience, not race. Hopefully One of these days I’ll be racing this distance, but that day hasn’t come yet).

The post race festivities began. I sucked down a Corona, two burgers and jumped back into the lake to try and cool of the legs.

Rev3 half iron triathlon in the books. Amazingly hard, but even more fun.

Oh yeah. And that new bottle of sunscreen that I bought? It doesn’t do much if you don’t use it.