This is the correct way to flash the recovery..
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...2&postcount=18
Most instructions I found were missing the part in red.. which really had me stumped on why it wasnt working.. especially a noob like me with android, but im starting to understand better now.
$ adb shell
$ cd /sdcard/
$ su
# flash_image recovery recovery-RA-heroc-v1.2.3.img