Ironman Louisville - TriathlonFull Ironman

As soon as I jumped in, the seal on the right side of my goggles came loose so the lovely Ohio River water flooded my eye. I had to tread water for about 20 seconds and fix my goggles. Of course, as I'm treading water, the next person in line jumped on top of me, causing me to crash slightly into Pegasus - sorry Pegasus! I'm sure she was like "what the f*#@ are you doing hitting me 3 feet into the swim?!"

After fixing my goggles, I started making the swim upstream. To say it was crowded would be the understatement of the century. Just like everyone else I've talked to that did the race, I was grabbed, punched, kicked, and felt up at some point in the water. Around the .3 mile mark, someone grabbed hold of my entire three piece set of manhood. Men wore red swim caps and women wore white. As this person was giving me the complete physical, I turned and said to myself, "please have a white swim cap on." Luckily, she did. I swam next to her for about ten minutes but she didn't make any more advances, so I decided to swim away.

At the .6 mile mark, I came upon two guys treading water, exchanging some pleasantries. I heard one guy say, "Listen a@@hole, you have 26.2 f*#@$%& miles to pass me on the run, you don't have to beat the s*@# out me now." I just laughed to myself, thinking they were both wasting time and energy.

After the turn, I decided to swim further from shore, adding some distance but giving myself more room. I think it was a good move. I definitely swam more than 2.4 miles, but dealt with a lot less congestion.

For some reason, when I tried breathing on my left side, I started getting nauseas. Unfortunately, all the bouys were on the left. Not that big of a deal though since I had to look up quite a bit to sight other swimmers. The visibility in the river was pretty much zero so there was no "following the bubbles" going on. Speaking of bubbles, if anyone was following my bubbles for drafting, sorry, those bubbles weren't from my feet kicking. :)

Based upon my lack of swimming skills, nothing really. My swim time is my normal open water swim pace. It really just boils down to taking lessons if I want to swim faster.

When I exited the water, I cracked the top of my left foot on the bottom of the first step. It actually cut it open. As I was running toward the changing tent, I heard a guy say "holy crap, look at his foot!"

In the changing tent I dried off a bit, wiped the blood off my foot, put my biking shorts over my tri-suit, lubed up the important parts, and sprayed sunscreen on myself. Yes, I know volunteers were there to apply sunscreen, but I use the spray kind because I know it works, and I thought it would be faster. One of the volunteers asked if he could help, so I said sure, please spray some more on my back. He did, but then started to "rub" it in. I said, no, you don't have to rub it in, just spray it. I must not have been thinking that clearly, because instead of having him spray more, I just exited and headed toward my bike. Big mistake because right where he "rubbed it in" I got sunburned. I have racing stripes on both sides of my shoulders/back. Oh well, he thought he was helping.

At the bike, I had my shoes clipped into my pedals and I decided to wear socks because of the step incident. I didn't attempt a flying mount because of the water bottles mounted behind my seat. I did get on my bike, put my left foot on my shoe smoothly, pedal, got my right foot on my pedal just as smoothly, and boogied out onto the course. However, when I got up to speed and tried putting my feet into my shoes, I discovered that my socks stuck to the velcro straps and I couldn't get them in. I tried several times before giving up, taking off my socks, slipping my feet into the shoes, and motoring on. I ended up just putting my socks into my back pocket for the rest of the ride.



Don't bang my foot on the step exiting the water. And, don't try putting my sock covered feet into my shoes if they are already clipped into the pedals. And finally, make sure the volunteer doesn't rub off my sunscreen.

The first (and last) 10-15 miles is relatively flat but the rest of the course is nothing but hills. Other than a few spots where I thought the hills were steep and/or long, I didn't find any one, two or three hills to be devastating. The difficulty was a result of the sheer number of hills -they just never stopped coming.

The out-back section of the course was exilerating! Massive descents and climbs. I was very thankful to make it out of that portion of the course without crashing.

TONS of flats on the course. Apparently someone decided to put tacks on the road.

I had to completely stop twice on the ride. The first time was on my second loop through LaGrange. At the bottom of a hill, a vehicle had come to a complete stop to make a left hand turn. The spectators were yelling for the driver to turn and get out of the way, but he didn't. Me and three other bikers stopped, unclipped, voiced our displeasure, and started back up after the car finally turned. That stunk.

The second time I had to stop also came at the bottom of a hill. This time was at about mile 95. I was already hurting, and felt a bit discouraged when this happened. Some crack whore decided to cut in front of me going up a hill. On the way down the hill, she came up to three bikes and couldn't pass them. The three bikes proceeded through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill (as the volunteers did a great job shutting down the intersection and waved them on). The car in front of me on the other hand, came to a complete stop at the stop sign, even though the volunteers were yelling at her to go through. So, again, I had to stop at the bottom of a hill, and start back up from ground zero.

I wanted to average around 18-19 for the ride, so I'm happy with the overall time. However, I know I could have gone faster if I hadn't messed up my hydration. Around mile 90, I realized that I hadn't peed on the bike, nor did I even feel like I had to. During my ride, I drank six 24 ounce bottles of Infinit, and another two 24 ounce bottles of water. Despite drinking 192 ounces of liquid on the bike, nothing was going out.



Drink a lot more

I got my feet out of my shoes and on top of my pedals. I didn't even attempt a flying dismount though. I was afraid of snagging my leg on a water bottle and not being able to react quickly enough on legs that just biked 112 miles of hills.

A volunteer quickly grabbed my bike and I ran to the changing tent. Took my helmet off on the way there, got my gear bag and proceeded to strip down in the tent. I decided to change all my clothes for the run. Lubed up the essential parts again, put on my running shorts and a fresh shirt, and headed out. This time I had the volunteers apply sunscreen outside the tent for me.

Nothing

The first 2 miles were fine which I'm sure was purely adrenaline. At mile 3, my body temperature and heart rate went through the roof. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't drink enough on the bike, and this is where it came back to haunt me. I started walking and drinking water and gatorade as much as my stomach could take. I also decided to roll the dice and eat pretzels, cookies, chicken broth, and anything other than coke (more on that in a minute). Once I got some fluids, salt, and sugar into my system, I started feeling a bit better.

A couple of days before the race I was talking to Marvarnett and he told me that coke was the "nectar of the gods" but once you start drinking it, you can't stop or you'll crash like nobody's business. I hadn't trained with coke and in fact haven't had any soda for more than a year so I was reluctant to try it. But at mile 16 I decided to roll the dice and started drinking it. Within five minutes, I felt like a hummingbird on crack. Man, do I wish that I started drinking that stuff sooner! I honestly felt better during miles 20-26 than I did during miles 3-8.

The final 100 yards or so down the finishers chute was absolutely incredible - I don't think my feet even hit the ground! Ever since I was 16 or so when I saw an Ironman on television, I told myself that "one day I'm going to do that." Well, August 30, 2009 was that day!

Drink more on the bike so I don't start the run dehydrated. Also, like with swimming, if I want to go faster, I need to have some help.

Got my medal and post-race photo taken, then found the food! Chowed down some pizza and potato chips, and had another coke. After eating, I got a fantastic massage - man that felt great.


Great race, great venue, great volunteers.

And last but certainly not least, I want to thank SweetP and my boys from the bottom of my heart for all their help on my Ironman journey. Without them I could not have done this. I spent a lot of hours training instead of spending time with the family, and they never complained or made me feel guilty. Instead, they were always supportive and told me how proud they were that I was going to do the race.