Instead of staying in town and enjoying various Kentucky Derby festivities, tomorrow afternoon I will pack all of my triathlon gear and our family of four into my truck and head south to Knoxville, Tennessee. The 250 mile trip will no doubt be littered with several stops considering we have a 13 month old and a soon to be 3 year old. I can't imagine being buckled tightly in a car seat for long periods of time is very much fun.
Last night I finally took off the old rear tire that I've been using while doing rides on the trainer over the winter and put on the new tire that has only been used once...Ironman Louisville. I also took a few minutes to clean up Flash and make sure that everything is secure on my new Saris bike rack. I'm ready for the bulk of my triathlon season to begin!
I'm really excited to do a Revolution 3 (Rev3) race. This four year old company is growing in popularity and is adding more races every year. I've heard really good things about them and given the fact that the WTC (owners of Ironman) is now on my bad side due to cancelling the Washington DC race, I'm hoping to have a good experience with Rev3 this weekend.
After doing four Sprint distance races already this spring, this will be my first Olympic distance triathlon. The 1500 meter (0.93 miles) swim will take place in the Tennessee River. This will also be my first open water swim of the season and I'm interested to see how good or bad my sighting and navigation will be. The 40K (24.8 mile) bike course heads southeast out of town and is very challenging with over 1400 feet in elevation change...including a climb to 1130 feet above sea level (should be an awesome view!). The 10K (6.2 mile) run is around the University of Tennessee campus and is fairly flat. The finish shoot is at the World's Fair Park, which looks to be a pretty cool venue.
Rev3 is known for hosting "family friendly" races, which is good for me! They have lots of things for kids to do before, during and after the races. Since we are arriving Friday night and the race isn't until Sunday morning, I'm glad there will be things going on to keep the kids occupied!
The other thing that I'm really excited about is racing next to some pros. Rev3 races have some pretty big prize purses and always attract some big name professional triathletes (over three dozen this year). I will be sharing the course with 2008 Olympian Matty Reed (winner of the first two races here in 2010 and 2011), 2004 Olympian Greg Bennett, Cameron Dye, Andrew Yoder and of course, fellow Louisville Landshark, Mike Hermanson!
I've been taking it easy this week after running the Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon last weekend. I tough swim workout on Monday, and easy ride on Tuesday and a short tempo run yesterday is all that I've done. I'm hoping to be very rested and ready come Sunday morning! Looks like temperatures in the high 80's with a chance of showers and high humidity...should be interesting...
If you are sitting around Sunday morning and want to follow the race, you can see live video and coverage at the Rev3 Knoxville website (another cool thing that Rev3 offers!). Here's the link: http://rev3tri.com/live
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