Here goes my take on Rev3 Cedar Point. This was my first half-distance, and though I am not a super slowtwitch stud, I am damn proud of myself. This completes my second season of racing. I still have two more years left in 25-29M, and am really looking forward to keeping up my progress.
A bit of background:
2009 PRs: Sprint 1:28 Oly 2:57
2010 PRs: Sprint 1:05 Oly 2:28
2010 Rev3 Cedar Point Half (05:38:00)
PreRace
Left Chicago about noon on Friday to make the 4h drive to the lovely town that is Sandusky, OH. Check into one of the park hotels, drop off all my stuff in the room, and make the 5min drive to Cedar Point to grab my packet & take a look around. Things were just getting set up, and I don’t think many people were in town this early. Nevertheless, picked up my packet, checked & double-checked that my chip worked, got my nice cotton race tee & headsweats visor, and made my way down to the beach to have a look at Lake Erie. Well folks I’m not a swimmer by a long shot, but even if you were a fish, you’d say the seas were angry that day. There was a good 2-3 foot wave breaking in towards shore, and this would prove to occupy my thoughts for a few hours. But at the end of the day, it is what it is, and I wasn’t going to worry much.
Saturday I checked the bike, roamed the expo, & listened to a course talk. The sky was getting pretty grey & a light rain started. Ran back into transition to put a plastic bag over the bars & seat just in case it got nasty out. RD says that everyone has been asking him about the swim location, as they had an alternate course set up on the opposite side of the CP peninsula, but he said they have been following wind reports intently, and the winds were due to die down that night & there was a 99% chance we’d be swimming on the lake side as planned. He does mention that they are doing their best to mark the swim appropriately, but several buoys have up & floated north to Canada. The crowd collectively moaned.
Left the race site & drove the bike course. Seems to be a nice mix of city & farm roads. Most quite well paved, really only one nasty section around the local high school. Relatively flat. Most notable hills are preceeded by a downhill section, so if you pay attention to your surroundings, you can do well here. Bit hilly on the farthest point of the loop, say miles 25-35, but nothing awful. I live in Chicago, so anything is a hill to me.
Not a whole lot to do around Sandusky, and really only one decent strip of retail I could find. Dinner was at the Olive Garden. 1h wait at 5p on a Saturday, bike racks on every car, and tall skinnies all over the place could only mean one thing. Race Night!
RaceDay
Swim 45:00 (286/484 Overall - 23/34 AG)
Being in the half meant my wave was at 8:30a, a nice break from the traditional early start.
Used to waking up at 3:30 or 4:00a, but this time had the alarm set for 5:30, had a bowl of the trusty Panda Puffs w/ banana. Was thankfully able to take care of business, and you know what I mean, quite early that morning. It’s grey & chilly out, maybe 60 degrees. Should make for nice racing. Sipped on a bottle of single strength EFS lime until race time. The pros & full racers went off a good bit earlier than us, which left for a nice clean course for my 2nd AG wave. Had a bit of time b/t transition close & wave, got to see pros swim & watched big Bjorn take off on his bike. That was pretty cool. My 25-29M wave was grouped with the 40-45M I think, we were the 2nd AGers. The swim was the 2nd half of the full-distance rectangular course into Lake Erie. The full distance had to do two rectangles, with a short beach run in between. The temp in the lake was quite nice, I’d guess right around 70, maybe a bit cooler. Perfect wetsuit swimming. The water was fairly murky, definitely couldn’t see the bottom. Overall the swim was fairly uneventful for me. Knowing full well I’m not yet a great swimmer, I started to the back left of the crowd as we were swimming clockwise. There was maybe a 200yd walk into the water before people started dolphin-diving & eventually swimming. Good bit of contact to start, but cleared up fairly quickly. The course was well marked & very easy to sight. Large yellow Rev3 buoys every 50 yards or so, huge red triangular turn buoys. I didn’t have any expectations going into this swim, so the fact that I did it in 45 minutes, didn’t get clobbered, and was feeling excited to get on my bike coming out, I’ll take it. Huge crowd at the swim exit, saw my GF & family, I was feeling great. Very short beach run uphill, another very short segment across parking lot in to transition. Feet cleaning buckets were great.
T1 2:06
In case I didn’t mention it anywhere else, Rev3 has a great bike rack (or lack thereof). It’s a wooden grid laid on the ground with slots for you wheels, each slot has your name on it. Bike stays put, racks don’t come crashing down. These things are definitely the way to go. Transition goes off without a hitch. Take a second to squirt some water on the feet. Should have put a GU in the pocket, you’ll see why in a minute. Sunglasses, helmet, armwarmers, GO.
Bike 02:37:00 (97/484 Overall - 12/34 AG - 21.40mph)
I’d say the bike is my strongest leg, and by far what I enjoy the most. Having never done a half, I was hesitant to go to hard, but on the other hand, I knew the bike was relatively flat & I planned to give it a go. The first 5 miles or so are on a local backroad service entrance to Cedar Point. Lanes were pretty tight here & the road was generally pretty crappy. I lost my flask of EFS Liquid Shot in the first 5 minutes, and water bottles were flying all over. Thank goodness I didn’t have a rear bottle rack, there’s a reason I hate those things. I’m sure alot of gameplans went out the window on this road. This is right on the edge of the lake, and the headwind was a bit nasty. But even with a Sub9/808 I was fine. The winds were more headwinds/tailwinds than sideways. With the road pretty bad on the stretch, nobody was really flying. I kept a 95-100 cadence to get the legs going, was cruising right around 20 mph, and was going past everybody. Must have passed 25-30 guys on this stretch. After this road there is a small stretch on a fairly busy local highway, but all of the intersections were well secured & the roads were fine. Short jog through through a local high school, horrid road, and then into farm country. The roads were great for the rest of the way. Some of the sections of farm road were a bit rougher, but only in the type of pavement used, no bumps or holes to speak of. Winds were pretty calm through the cornfields. I remembered the road signs and hills from my course drive the night before & this really helped me hammer the downhills and really pull back on the uphills. For living in the flattest city known to man, I think I did really well on the uphills. Throughout the course I only needed the small ring on one hill, and was able to keep under 125% wattage on hills.
Every once in a while you’d feel insanely strong on the bike & realize it was a solid tailwind. Every time I felt this I geared as much as I could and let the wind take me. Great to nail some flat sections at 30mph+. One section of course about half way through I hear a freight train of discs behind me & here come Matty White & Viktor blazing past. Funny to see them roaring by on their 2nd loop when I think I’m doing well. Rest of the bike went off without a hitch. After about 40-45mi my legs had had about enough, and this was right about when we were rolling back into town. Lady luck decided to grace is with a solid headwind off the lake, and this was like a smack in the face. I used this as an opportunity to spin it out, figure I’d just get the legs good & loose for the run. Back to the nasty bumpy backroad stretch. Everybody is standing up and trying to get some blood to the legs, they are all crawling, I use this chance to blow past them. Pick up maybe 10-15 spots on this stretch alone. Roll back into the parking lot, clean dismount, off to T2.
Overall, no real drafting to speak of. Saw a few packs, but were well spaced out. Played leap-frog with a few guys, thought I might get dinged by the official rolling by at the worst possible moment when I was trying to drop back, but all ended up well. Saw course marshalls many many times.
Bike nutrition:
Aero bottle double strength EFS Grape.
Flask EFS Liquid Shot (dropped)
Water every aid station.
With the flask dropped, the plan became EFS Grape followed by water every 10mins, water every 5mins. I feel this worked well. Never felt like I was zapped, stomach felt fine the whole way.
T2 2:26
Don’t see many bikes in my area, pretty encouraged by that. The sky by now is clear & blue, and the sun is getting hot. Socks on, shoes on, switch from black arm warmers to white arm coolers, quick shot of sunscreen & I’m off. Quick pee break then onto the run.
Run 02:12:00 (173/484 Overall - 20/34 AG)
Well running is my weakness. It’s what I’m working hardest at, and hopefully the best is yet to come. Standalone running leading up to the race I was able to hold 8:30s for 10miles, and as you’ll see here this fell apart. Maybe not a real runner by ST standards, but pretty good from when I started a year ago. I’m hesitant to say that I gave it too much on the bike, b/c my HR was in line the whole time & my legs felt fine coming off the bike, I just didn’t have the aerobic capacity for the run. But more bricks & more racing is really the only way to know. Head out of T2, legs feeling fine. I know I have a lot of running to do, I’ve just hammered away for 2+ hours, and it’s getting hot. I hold back, and make my way down the long causeway of the CP peninsula running 8:30s for the first 2 mi. I feel ok at this point. The usual voices are there telling me to stop, but I convince myself I’m going to divide the run up into aid stations (every 1mi) and we will get through just fine that way. I take a sip of EFS Liquid shot coming up to every aid station, wash it down with a 1/2 cup of water, and pour another cup down my back. The legs are doing fine & I make my way to mile 5 before my run turns into a shuffle. At this point I tell myself I am not going to walk the course, but I will walk at the aid stations & take a break. Well as I’m sure you can relate, this was the beginning of the end. I am running 9min/miles at this point. By the time I get to the 8 mile marker, I am walking more & more away from every aid station. I tell myself that walking is just about as fast as my shuffle-run, so I might as well run as planned. I manage to make it through to the 11 mile marker, where we are heading back up the causeway, fighting the lake winds, uphill. Here it pretty much turns into walk for 2 min, run a 10:00 pace for 2 min. I’m a bit upset with myself, but I see the 12mile marker, and I give it all I have to the finish line. Cool to have the huge finishing chute inside the park, and I’m thrilled to be finishing whether I had walked or not. The run course was quite nice. Bit industrial, nice bit through waterfront parks, little residential. Nice course, no traffic, great aid stations, very pleased. In the more industrial parts it was a bit lonely at points, very quiet, no people in sight.
Having never done this distance, 5:30 was my mental wish. I think I came close enough to label this a success.
My real goal was to not walk, but in no way will I be picky about this race. However I did it, I started & I finished, & I’ll be back for more.
Thoughts on Rev3…
I can’t give anyone a fair comparison vs WTC as I’ve never done one. But I have done many big & small races. This one was really top notch. I’ll do it again.
From the prompt email responses I got before the race, to the actual race going off without a hitch, I feel my money was well spent.
They could have used some more staff/volunteers, but I don’t know how much you can do about this the first year. Sunscreen appliers would have been nice.
I’ve heard some mention that the course was not well-marked & they made wrong turns, but I found the signage/labeling to be great & volunteers/police at every single turn. I don’t know how you could have gotten off course. Mileage markers on the bike would have been nice.
Spectators were left to a very small area of the park without paying $30 for tickets. I understand this logic as they would have otherwise had free reign of the park, but nobody in my family had any idea where the jumbotron was, nor did I. While it’s a nice selling point to be able to ‘finish inside the park’ I think it would have been just as nice to not run 25 yards inside the park, and instead have had a huge sprawling celebration are in the parking lot by the expo & transition.
Granted my family didn’t have an iPhone on them, but they had no idea how tracking worked or any way to find out where & when I was or would be.
As this is such a selling point for Rev3, it would be nice to see this further ironed out. Reading some things on ST, I see you guys had issues with tracking as well.
Overall, I really enjoyed the event & the location, I feel my money was well spent, & I’d go back to race this or another Rev event for sure.
Thanks for reading.
-Ed
