Courtenay Brown

Walking isn’t really an activity in which I partake. It ranks up there with “playing games that aren’t Scrabble” and “gardening” on the list of things I try not to do.

Store that nugget away for a second.

Now: Rev3 Quassy! I raced this past weekend. I enjoyed it. It was the hardest race I’ve done yet, in terms of percentage of course that was flat (I estimate it at 1.7%, which “coincidentally” is 1.2 divided by 70.3), and also in terms of the quality of competition.

I can’t wait for next year!

It was absolutely beautiful, and I really enjoyed testing myself under difficult conditions. We had a no-wetsuit swim, I definitely would have liked the extra buoyancy but the water temperature was really pleasant and I swam the same speed as my best wetsuit-legal half IM (a year ago), so that’s good.

The bike was hard, but I had driven the course two days before and I was mentally ready. I kept a steady hard effort and took mental notes on issues to be addressed at my bike fit appointment this week. In all, I’m really happy to be on a bike that fits small riders well and is so nimble and fast, but there are a few changes that need to happen on the front end to really solidify my partnership with my little Kestrel 4000.

On the run, typically my strongest leg, the wheels fell off pretty dramatically. Or the legs I guess. It is for this reason I mentioned my distaste for walking… for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t really racing during the run. I was playing mental tricks on myself and staying determined not to walk. Success! In the form of 7:17 pace, but still, I ran, and I totally ran faster than Julie Dibens did last year, so that is the same as winning.

I finished in just over 5 hours, nothing really to be proud of in and of itself, but given that my training volume is much less than it was last year and the year before, I’m pleased. For example, that run was my longest run, by 3 miles, since my last half-IM last June, and my only training day of >4.5 hours yet this year was two weeks ago, when I raced Columbia and then trained for another 2 hrs 45 in order to prove to my coach that I could race Quassy without dying . Anyway, I think the effort will really pay off come July 10, when I will be racing Rev3 Portland.

I will keep my equipment pretty much the same for Portland. I hope to get to use my TYR Hurricane wetsuit, but if the Willamette River gets above 68 degrees, the Torque swimskin feels great in the water. Like Quassy, Portland will be a fairly hilly course, which is perfect for my Rolf Prima TDF 58 wheels – they are super light so they feel great on the climbs, and their low spoke count means they fly on the descents too.

I will change my nutrition only slightly. I had my now-standard flask of Vanilla EFS Liquid Shot with a scoop of PreRace in the hour before the start, and I felt energized and very focused through the first 3.5 hours of the race. I had about 750 calories on the bike – 2x 24 oz of EFS Grape at 175 calories each, and one full flask of EFS Liquid Shot at 400 calories. In theory this is plenty, but because the distance was a stretch for me given my training up to this point, I wish I’d brought an additional 100 calories. I carried a flask of Liquid Shot on the run, and consumed about 150 calories of it. The other 250 calories of that flask appear to be all over the innards of my bike case… uhgh packing. I think the additional training I’ll do between now and Portland will help a lot (yay summer!), but I still might pack another hundred calories on the bike (and a little PreRace in my run flask!).

OK thanks for reading, and for sharing in my learning process!