Rev3 Knoxville Oly Tri Pro Race

Last weekend I had the pleasure of cheering on my wife, Alaina Case, in her first race as a professional triathlete at Rev3 Knoxville, an Olympic distance triathlon.  I want to capture my experience seeing the front of the race up close and some thoughts on how the pro race is different than the age group race that I've both watched and competed in.

Rev3 does a nice job celebrating the professional athletes that choose to compete in their races.  For example, we arrive on Friday at the expo and start/finish area in Worlds Fair Park in downtown Knoxville -- a beautiful location for this event -- and Rev 3 has a large electronic billboard showing pictures and names of the pro's racing that weekend.  Alaina's picture pops up almost right when we got there, and the smile on her real face is even bigger than the one on the jumbotron.

After packet pickup, we pre-drove part of the course, and Alaina rode one of the more technical descents since that is one element of the course we can't practice in Michigan.  I think that doing this type of recon and practice is crucial for building confidence on race day.

On Saturday afternoon, there is a mandatory pro meeting in a VIP tent, where seasoned pros like race winner, Greg Bennett, and crowd favorite, Amanda Lovato, as well as first timers like Alaina gathered to hear clarifications on the stagger rule and other rules of the race.  I imagine that for the vets, this meeting seems like information they've heard a million times, but for someone like Alaina, it is the first time she is gathered together as a part of the pro field.  It serves as her official entry into the elite club, and that's a special moment.

Meanwhile, I enjoy the expo, trying on some Normatec boots for recovery from my Smoky Mountain run that morning, and eating sugary carb goodies from the vendors from Powerbar, and then playing with some dogs at the US Pro Tri tent.  Expos are fun, especially without racing nerves!

Fast-forward to race day.  The pro's have a separate, fenced-off racking area in transition for their bikes, and behind each of their spots is a picture with their name.  I thought this was cool because not only was it good hype for the pro's, but it also gave them name/face recognition for many AG athletes who might not know a pro in their sport if they were standing behind them in the loo queue.  Transition area for this race is inside a parking garage, about 1/4 mile from the swim exit, so it's a long run into T1.  One of the biggest differences between the pro's and AGers is how they deal with the long transitions.  More on that later.

After Alaina sets up transition, I walk with her down to the swim start, which is about 1/2 mile down the road.  Some of the pro's (look for the P on the back of their calf where age group numbers would've been) are running down to the start despite the fact that there is plenty of time to warm up in the water.  This is to warm up their legs for the bike/run, since the Olympic distance is so short and they'll be performing at near 100% effort from the gun.

The pre-swim staging area is abuzz with nerves and chatter, same as the AG start, only here is two-time Rev3 Knoxville winner, Matty Reed and his wife and toddler, and over there is bike slayer, Andrew Yoder, and down there is gazelle runner, Kelly Williamson, all fine-tuning their wetsuit fit.  Imagine if you could sign up for a baseball tournament, and before the game you lined up for batting practice behind Alex Rodriguez or Ryan Howard.  Triathlon has a great setup in that you can walk up to any pro in your sport and say hi and good luck on race day, and then compete on the same exact course as them.  Yet only a handful of age groupers there actually did just that from what I saw.  Even at a race, the pro's go largely unnoticed or strangely ignored.

After the National Anthem, the male pro's are in the water, and when the gun goes off, the water explodes in a fury of arms and legs.  Seeing Alaina in the water with the female pro's, ready to throw down with the best in the race is awesome.  And I start to realize how the pro race really is different.  With a small field like what I am seeing here, there will be virtually no legal draft, on the swim or on the bike.  You will know exactly how you stack up against the best at that race on all three disciplines, and no matter how fast you are as an age grouper, you may finish dead last on this day.  To quote Pre, the pro race is a "pure guts race."

I head to the swim exit at U of T boat house to catch the male pro's out of the water.  Cam Dye leads the way and he is sprinting up to T1.  He leaps all 3 steps and takes the fastest tangents into the garage.  In a flash he's at my back on his bike and hammering from the start.  All the other top pros follow suit, male and female.  This is a huge difference from what I see in the age group race, where athletes are lightly jogging, taking water from the aid station, fumbling with equipment, etc.  Ultrarunner, Geoff Roes, says that it's not about how fast you can move through the fast parts of a course, but how quickly and efficiently you can move through the slowest parts of the course.  And transitions are most certainly that.

Alaina comes through and I give her a big cheer and snap a few pics out of the swim and onto the bike.  I take a walk through UT campus during the bike segment on a perfect Tennessee day.  In less than an hour I'm back at the T2 exit and watching the male pro's come out of the parking garage onto the run course.  Again, they are blistering fast, snagging some water with an explosion and powering through at ~5:30/mi pace.  They carve out perfect tangents as machines of efficiency.

The female pro's attack out of T2 as well, and I mark Alaina's place and time behind her closest competitors, giving her this information and cheering her onto the run.  She's ~22nd out of 25, 13:00 down on the leader but less than a minute from three other women, and she looks really comfortable now, ready to claw her way up the standings.  Which is exactly what she does, running a blistering 39:xx and finishing her race with power and a huge smile.  I'm so proud of her it's hard to put down in words.

Alaina had a rough patch in the swim, didn't execute the start of the bike the way she wanted, but put her race together on the back half of the bike and killed the run.  That takes pure guts in your first pro race, and I'm proud to call her my champion.  Can't wait to see what she does in at Rev3 Quassy Half-Iron.

After the race, I hung out in the VIP tent with Alaina and she shared "war stories" with other male and female pro's and we thanked the Rev3 organizers for the home stay and putting on a great race.  I'm not too big to say that sitting at a table next to Greg Bennett and Richie Cunningham, with Andrew Yoder across the way was also really really cool and a highlight of my weekend.  Thanks to Rev3 for putting on a top notch race experience.