2016-2017 Season Highlights
It’s hard to believe it has already been a year since we started Revel Racing. While this certainly is not an all-inclusive list, as I take time to reflect, here are some of the things that stand out to me as high points of the season.
New Team!
Last October we set off with a new team and a new mission: to provide quality coaching while raising awareness for charities and giving back through sport. Simply put, it has been an amazing year! We started off with seven athletes, and we have grown to welcome another nine athletes to our ranks. Friendships have been made and the team cohesion continues to grow. This was quite obvious with the outpouring of support I saw for Melissa after her crash. I am incredibly proud of the team we have begun to assemble, and I’m looking forward to watching this team continue to succeed in the years to come.
Team Charity: Neurofibromatosis Northeast
This year Neurofibromatosis Northeast was chosen as our team charity. Between personal donations and the team donation we raised almost $2,000! I would like to offer a special thanks to Melissa, Ann and Mark for joining Moo’s Marauders for the Coast to a Cure ride. Neurofibromatosis can be a truly devastating disease. I’m excited we were able to come together to do our part in helping in finding a cure.
10% increase in power
To quote one athlete, this year we were “handing out new FTP’s like candy.” I broke it down by the number of years each athlete has been training with a power meter, expecting to see that even veteran athletes, once they started training with power, would still see significant gains.
On average, we saw a 117% increase in %FTP (~35 watts) over the season!!! To put this into perspective, on the Lake Placid bike course this would work out to approximately 54 minutes, on average, for the full 112 miles or an estimated 24 minutes for the half. (Proportionally, you see greater gains over the full course because wind resistance increases with speed, but that’s a topic for another day.) This is a testament to the number of grueling hours you all put into the trainer sessions. Congratulations!
IRONMAN Santa Rosa TriClub Award
I couldn’t be more excited about having won the Division V award this year. This is because, one person, no matter how talented, cannot win this award on their own. Every member of the team scores points whether they win the race or are a midnight (or 11:40 in Santa Rosa, as the case may be) finisher. This speaks again to the great team we’ve begun to assemble as well as the hard work everyone has put in over the season.
Firsts
Last, but certainly not least, there has been many “firsts” throughout the season from athletes competing in their first sprint all the way through athletes taking on their first Ironman. At every level this can be daunting task.
Often, I feel as though the IRONMAN athletes get all the props, but nothing can be as intimidating as your first triathlon. This year, Michelle Miller, Tim Kirkman and Jamie Gifford did their first sprint tri at Cranberry in August then Jamie and Tim went on to tackle the frigid waters at the Lobsterman Olympic in September. It’s been a lot of fun this season watching them evolve from athletes questioning about what to wear to asking strategic questions, such as how to position themselves in the swim.
Aaron Landeryou took this a step further. He wasn’t content to start at the sprint distance, so Aaron jumped right in this year with both feet taking on the Mass State Olympic on his way to conquering the Pumpkinman 70.3.
Eris Kristuli and Brendan Davis both had a number of races under their belts and decided to tackle IRONMAN this year. Despite a hip injury, Eris crushed IRONMAN Lake Placid in 11:34:15 and finished 16th in her age group. The following weekend Brendan raced IRONMAN Santa Rosa to finish in 12:30:38 under sweltering conditions.
Not his first rodeo, with twelve IRONMAN races under his belt, Richard Maloney finally got his chance to race his first IRONMAN World Championships. It was another brutal day on the Queen Q with some toasty weather and unforgiving winds, but he got it done in 13:23:03
To finish off the season, Tracy Landeryou ran her first marathon. She competed at the Bay State Marathon last weekend to finish in 5:29:09!
Congratulations everyone, and thank you all for making this first year for Revel Racing so special!
Dave
