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Posts Tagged ‘Triathlon’

Mean Girls of Triathlon

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Okay, before you read this, go over to Frayed Laces’ blog and read one of her recent posts about the recent trend of women running in booty shorts, boy shorts, bun huggers, or whatever you want to call them. It is a quick read (only 100 words) but important context for the rest of my rant: http://frayedlaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/heart-to-heart-with-ladies.html

And before I continue ranting, let me say that I really like FL. She is a good bloggy/Twitter friend, but I just really disagree with her most recent post.

Thanks to Beth Walsh for serving as the model for this post’s picture. Rocking booty shorts and not giving an F.

First: Running clothing choice is extremely personal. From fit, to cost to how it looks to how it makes you feel (sexy or fast or thin), everyone has reasons for the choices they make. Just like how I refuse to give people advice on what running shoes will work for them (unless I pick up a side job at a running shoe store), I refuse to tell people what they should and shouldn’t be wearing. I’ll give advice on what I like and what works for me, but that is where I stop. Your booty is your business.

Second: I’d much rather live in a society where people are comfortable enough with their bodies to wear what makes them happy rather than a place where everyone is so concerned about what everyone else thinks that they make random decisions like what shorts to wear based on what other people will think.

When I see a chubby girl running on a hot and humid day in just a sports bra, it makes my heart happy. She is out there being fit, not giving an F what other people think and being more concerned about comfort than a “slap test.” My wenis doesn’t get hard, but it helps to rebuild my faith in American society.

Happiness is infectious and confidence is the sexiest quality that any woman can have. If you feel sexy in booty shorts (or sweatpants and a hoodie) and can go running with a big smile, do it. And don’t give a fuck about what anyone else thinks.

Frayed Laces’ blog post is the triathlon version “Mean Girls.” The triathlon world does NOT need another Regina George.

Tags: booty shorts, mean girls, Triathlon | Posted in Triathlon | 17 Comments »

USA Triathlon Age Group Championship Highlight Video

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

I made the USAT AG Nationals highlight reel! Check out my own little shoutout at 3:40.

Apparently complimenting someone on their “gregarious spirit” is a nice away of saying “this guy clearly isn’t competing for a top spot.” But hey, I’ll take it! (and they were right on both counts and I had a blast.

Tags: Triathlon, triathlon video, usat age group nationals | Posted in Triathlon, Videos | 2 Comments »

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 »

USAT Age Group Nationals Race Report

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

After a nice easy real week filled with massage, stretching, fruits and veggies and extra sleep, I could actally feel my quads again and was feeling like I might actually be able to have a solid race. And I didn’t go crazy or get sick either!

Sam and I drove up to Vermont early on Friday morning, hit up registration, some free samples at the vendor booths and made or way to our hotel. I decided to skip the host hotel and go for one MUCH closer to the actual race. We didn’t need our car all weekend and I could see the whole swim course from my window. It was pretty sweet.

The swim course and the Adirondack mountains on the other side of Lake Champlain.

And yes, the sun looked EXACTLY like that streaming through the clouds in real life. Pretty cool, eh?

RACE MORNING
I was up and at ‘em at 5:30. I dressed, drank some EFS and took down a banana and some yogurt before heading over to transition. My swim wave went off an hour after the first wave and transition didn’t close until late, so I was in no rush. There was a lot of waiting around and sitting on the dock with Sam as we watched the other waves go off, but no real stress.

The minutes leading up to my swim wave is usually when the butterflies start kicking in, but nother this time. Despite being my biggest and last triathlon of the year, I was pretty relaxed. We watched about 5 or 10 waves go off before I even put on my wetsuit. I drank a flask of First Endurance Pre Race then lubed up my neck, shoulders, arms and legs with Tri Slide and I gathered with the rest of my age group to dive on in.

SWIM

We only had a few minutes to warm up in the water before our wave went off. Just enough to get the shoulders loose and do any last minute wetsuit adjustments before lining up for the gun. I warmed up the interior of my wetsuit, and just floated until they sent us off. Despite being in a pretty wide start line where our group was probably only 2-3 people deep at any one point, it was a pretty aggressive start. Elbows and feet were flying everywhere. I did my best to push through ‘em and keep on some fast feet without taking a heel to my eye or fist to the back of my head.

It worked, I managed to stay out of any brawls with other adrenaline fueled athletes and still push the pace. The course made a hard right turn. Due east and right into the sun. UGH. I couldn’t see a damn thing except for a group of splashing feet and elbows about 25 meters ahead of me. I followed them until they realized they were WAY off course and took a hard turn to get back on. Frustrating. While the water was pretty calm in the protected harbor, I think some of the waves in one section where there was a gap in the barriers helped throw me off course too. After some more diligent sighting, I was back on course, hugging the buoys and out of the water.

Going into the race, I knew that I had the fitness to set an Oly swim course PR as long as I stayed on course. I was right. Poor sighting and no PR. Frustrating. Oh well. Onward and upward.

Time: 28:27

Pace: 1:54/100m

Bike

After a respectable, but not blazing fast T1 (1:33) I was off on the bike. The first third of the bike had some decent (short) climbs and was into a headwind. I kept pushing to try to catch up to some faster swimmers, but going uphill into a headwinds S-U-C-K-S. I felt like my brakes were dragging or something. If it wasn’t for catching up to people in earlier waves, it would have been easy to get down on myself, but everyone was stuck facing the same conditions.

Fortunately, on the back half was treating me much better and I fell into a good rhythm. Nice rollers, pushing hard and a little tail wind sent me home 3.5 minutes faster than my last bike course PR. Big smile on my face. Nutrition wise, I just took one 2oo calorie bottle of EFS.

Time: 1:07:39 (22 mph)

Run

What I did NOT know is that they were live streaming video from the race. My mom, Rachelle and Jill were all watching and cheering for me as one of the cameras caught me coming into T2. If I had known, maybe I would have picked it up a little because they were NOT very impressed with my speediness through transition. Then Jill and Rachelle proceed to heckle me over Twitter. Gotta love teammate support.

Out of transition and onto the course was the only real hill on the whole course, but it was a biggie. Half of the people were walking! Seriously people? Walking in the first 1/4 mile of Nationals? Let’s get this thing done!

I had a pretty slow first mile because of the hill (around 8:00) but after that I kept ticking off each mile at around 7:25-7:35. I kept chugging along and feeding off of everyone’s energy. People were laying it all out there and destroying their bodies just to get to the finish line, way more than any other race I’d been in. It was awesome to be around.

My final time was 46:19, which was 40 seconds faster than the stand alone 10k that I did at Beach to Beacon two weeks ago! Not too shabby, eh?

Edit: Rumor is that the run course may have been a little short, but I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that.

Total Time: 2:25:28

Yes people, that is a HUGE 15 minute PR. I had never even broken 2:40 before. A good day, eh? I feel like this was the race where I was finally able to pull off the race performance that I was capable off. Other than a little zig zagging on the swim, it was just the race I wanted.

And I had expected some fierce competition, but NOTHING like what actually showed up. If I had been lucky enough to PR by only 8 minutes, I would have been dead last. I lucked out big time with not ending up DFL!

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying local beers, burritos the size of my face, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sundaes and laying in my hotel bed with Sam watching awful movies on TV. I can’t imagine a better weekend.

Enjoying the post-race beer garden. Cheap beers AND they didn’t need my ID. They just looked at my calf. Kinda awesome.