From the very start, I did not want to be swimming. Could not get into a rhythm and just struggled all around, I was just full of negatives and was ready to call it a day 200 yards into the swim. But of course I kept going and By the time I made it around the 1st turn I was by myself and proceeded to zig-zag all over the place. The nice part was in this section there was a bit of a current pushing down the lake. The bad part is when I hit the last few turns and started to come back to the start I found myself was going against the current. I was sure I had been swimming for over an hour and was surprised that I had actually came in under my goal time of 45m.

Not sure, I was just not into the swim and was ready to be done before I started. Sometimes the duathlon doesn't seem like such a bad idea!

Strolled through this to gather my thoughts and prepare for the bike. No rush just gathered everything together and headed out.

Wow, this course was tough with a lot of climbing that almost seemed never ending with minimal downhill recovery time. Then add in the crappy weather and this quickly became one of the toughest bike rides I have completed. All morning long there was a light mist that would occasionally change to a rain. Once out on the bike though it was mostly a rain that was strong enough to cover my helmet shield but not much more. The weather really created 2 problems, 1st with the wet roads I was not very aggressive on the downhills, and 2nd once I did find a flatter section there was a strong head wind that hindered any progress. My plan for the ride was to try and control my effort and keep my HR below 140. The final numbers show I finished with an average of 138 but after reviewing the data I realized that I had a lot of spikes above 150 and have to wonder how much this affected my run. Another big issue I ran into was losing one of my bottles. Coming out of transition and heading out onto the course I hit a bump and it went flying off the back, luckily someone grabbed it and handed it back to me. At this point I was in front if the only aid station for the bike and probably should have just left it there and picked it up on my 2nd lap. But Instead I kept it and started the ride, then probably 3 miles in, I crossed a bridge and the bump sent the bottle off again. I stopped but as soon as I looked back the bottle rolled off the bridge and into the river to never be seen again! I can only imagine some nasty carp is getting a pretty good treat. Losing this bottle really put a hurt on my nutrition plan, I had made up 3 bottles with about 420 calories in each. On top of these I had 2 granola bars that was adding another 200 calories. In total I should have taken in about 1460 calories, which during training has been has been a decent number in training. Once the bottle was gone I was now barely over 1000 calories and past experience has shown its not enough.
There were 2 scary moments on the ride, and these can probably be described more as a stain in the shorts type of moment. Several of the hills reminded me of a roller coaster hill, where you come up over the top and go into almost a vertical decent. From this point it is easy to pick up a lot of speed. But again the weather decided to join in on the fun. For the majority of the hill there were trees lining both sides, but as soon as you hit the bottom it turned into farm fields and opened up for a pretty good cross wind. On one hill I caught a glimpse of my watch and was cruising around 36mph, when I came to the bottom of the hill the wind hit me and literally knocked me about 3ft side ways. Somehow I managed to hold on and keep going in the right direction, but there was definitely a huge pucker factor!




Tail of the tape:
I thought I had picked up the effort on the 2nd lap but really only managed to even split both laps, 1st was around 1:42 and the 2nd came in around 1:38.
Lap times (5 miles each) time/avg speed/avg HR
1: 17:57 16.71 146
2: 19:34 15.33 146
3: 19:35 15.32 142
4: 18:51 15.92 132
5: 17:38 17.01 130
6: 15:28 19.40 124
7: 21:24 14.02 135
8: 19:22 15.49 139
9: 18:01 16.65 141
10: 18:40 16.07 140
11: 13:43 19.85 134

My goal was to start at a 10m pace for the 1st 5k, and then drop 30s on the pace at the beginning of every 5k, so at the end I would be running around an 8:30 pace. To me this seemed like a pretty reasonable pace taking my lack of recent run volume but it didn't turn out so well.
The 1st 2 5k sections went off as planned, on the 1st I had to hold back a bit. The 2nd 5k also went off without a hitch and the pace continued to be around 9:30.
The 3rd 5k though was where the struggles started, early on I was hitting the 9:00 pace but it quickly started to slide and by the end I was mixing in some run walk and just trying to keep moving. The last 3 miles were pretty much the same with some running, a lot of walking but continued forward progress. Not sure what gave out 1st, my tight hamstrings, the sore ankles or just the will to keep running. But something definitely gave out and prevented a better run. Ultimately though I was only about 4 minutes slower than rev3 last year and with the difficulty of the course I think I am claiming that as a success.
Lap times (3 miles each) time/pace/avg HR
1: 29:32 9:50 148
2: 28:55 9:38 152
3: 33:39 11:13 143
4: 38:03 12:41 132
Plus a bit to finish it off

I most definitely under estimated this course! The elevation gain on the bike was somewhere around 3500ft which is unheard of where my training takes place. As for the run it was nothing what I expected. When the change was made to run in the campground, I thought great should be nice and flat! I figured the campground was like most campgrounds I have been to which are mostly flat. But that was not he case and the hills put another beating on me.
Outside of the course difficulty I added to it by really shutting down on the training front in June. I was making great strides in May and going into June when life took over. I had the DC trip with the school, the boys baseball kicked into full gear and then there were just the other several items that seemed to come from nowhere. Plus combine in the fact that this was the 3rd race in 4 weeks and I had set myself up for something less than spectacular! No regrets though as I will always put the kids first and the racing has been a blast. Now to get back on focus and start the build to Cedar Point.