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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 »

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.

Chipotle burrito from Bueno y Sano

Big B&J Sundae

One of my favorite beers: Switchback Ale

And It only took me about 12 hours to think “Damn that was a fast race! I wonder how much faster I can go next year?!”

I think I already have a goal for the 2012 season…

Tags: burlington vermont, Triathlon, usat age group nationals | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon, Videos | 9 Comments »

Fairlee Race Camping

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

This weekend was the Fairlee Olympic up in Vermont, and I got to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

RACE CAMPING!

I convinced Sam and a bunch of friends to head up into the mountains to spend some time in the woods. We spent Saturday afternoon playing cornhole, grilling and enjoying some cold beers.

Sam hanging out at the camp site.

Our cozy pre-race accommodations.

Once the sun went down, we started up the fire and roasted up my new favorite pre-race snack. SMORES!

(I love the way the fire is lighting up Sam’s face in this pic.)

Sunday morning came and the birds and the sun were our alarm clock. We broke down our campsite and headed up the road to the race.

I went through my morning nutrition plan with no major changes. The one new tip that I took was my teammate Jill – a flask of my power juice. Some First Endurance PreRace to chug as I am in transition and getting ready to head to the swim. This is my secret weapon.

The most underrated triathlon supplement.

Team Trakkers Pride

The view of the mountains over the swim start.

Suited up in my TYR Hurricane. I freaking LOVE this wetsuit.

Fairlee Triathlon Swim Start

Walking with my wave to the starting line.

Coach gave me a different plan (compared to my usual protocol). Kill the first 200m of the swim. One of my biggest mistakes at Quassy was lining up in the way back of the swim wave and playing it super conservative. This time around I worked my up to the very front and got amped up to try to hold on to some fishie feet. It seemed like a lot of other guys in my swim wave were playing it pretty conservative, so I had plenty of room up front. I didn’t even have to fight my way through the pack once the gun went off.

You probably can’t tell from the pic above, the swim course was kind of a disaster. There was a dock right in the middle of our route and one of the buoys drifted away (but we couldn’t even see it from the beach because a boat was in the way. The RD told us to skip the second buoy that floated away, but unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where the hell it was. I couldn’t see any of the damn buoys because my wave’s caps were yellow and so were the buoys. A yellow swim cap at 20m and a big yellow buoy at 200m look absolutely identacle.

Frustrating, but who doesn’t like a challenge? Right? Unfortunately, just about everyone around my wave didn’t skip the second buoy (because we couldn’t see the third) and ended up making the course a LOT longer. So much for that swim course PR I was hoping for….

Swim Time: 30:51 (75/236)

Entering transition.

Taking off my wetsuit/showing off my assets.

Putting on my socks. Riveting, eh?

The bike course was AWESOME. Riding through the green mountains with some great scenery on either side. The route was a pretty simple out and back, but had some nice smooth flats with some light rollers and a few steep out-of-the-saddle climbs. I was feeling really strong and kept attacking, hunting down other guys ahead of me. A few other guys got the best of me, but overall I was climbing up the standings.

Then I looked down and realized I was averaging over 21mph and still felt great. I have never even averaged over 20mph in a training ride… I went with it. God DAMN I love riding my bike.

Side note, does anyone else get some extra satisfaction when passing someone on a disc wheel when you are rocking vanilla training wheels and no aero helmet? Cuz I do.

Bike: 1:10:53 – 21mph (36/236)

The run started off HOT and only got hotter. I dumped the rest of the water from my bike over my head before I even left transition!

I tried to keep my pace in check for the first half, so I could unleash whatever was left for the back half. Despite the heat, I was actually feeling pretty good. I even passed a girl who complimented me on my turnover. Does that mean my running is actually coming back and improving this year?!

It heated up to 95 degrees and when the course wasn’t shaded, it was a freaking nightmare. I just kept running as fast as I could so I could get myself into the shade. And the hills were WAY more than I was expecting. I had to mentally dig deep and think back to some of the really hard hill repeat workouts I’ve knocked out lately to keep my pace up.

In the end, my time definitely suffered because of the heat and the hills, but everyone was suffering from the same course. We were all in it together. It hurt and I couldn’t take in enough water to keep my body cold, but I kept moving forward.

Run: 50:09 (8:02 min/mile) – 60/236
Total Time: 2:36:30 (4/8 in my AG)
So despite a long swim course and a hella hot run course, I managed a 5 minute PR!
A good weekend and my first race camping trip was a big success. I was only 1:40 off of a podium finish! Grrrr…
I still couldn’t be happier. Thanks for reading!
Next up: Beach To Beacon 10k.
And of course, thanks to my awesome sponsors who help me do this triathlon thing every day. I love you all. Rev3, Trakkers, Avia, First Endurance, SBR Sports, All3Sports, TYR, Canari, Recovery Pump and CycleOps.

But more importantly, thanks to my awesome bride-to-be for supporting me me, sleeping on the ground, taking awesome race pictures, cheering me on and hanging out in the sun all day just so I’ll have the motivation of seeing her at the finish line as some extra motivation to keep me going.

I love her the most.

Tags: camping, fairlee triathlon, fairlee vermont, team trakkers, Triathlon | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon | 3 Comments »

On The Hunt For Burlington – Again

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Remember last month when I thought I made my season goal of qualifying for age group nationals, but missed?

Yeah. I made up for that this morning and rocked it. Hilly course and NASTY cold and wet conditions, but I got it done. (I thought my wenis was frozen off on the bike!)

I am a very happy triathlete and am psyched to be racing with some good friends in Vermont this August.

Now i just gotta tweak my training plan to make sure that I am prepared.

Tags: age group nationals, Triathlon, usat | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon | 7 Comments »