Ironman Louisville - TriathlonFull Ironman

I was somewhat disappointed to see my time on this swim. I felt like it went much better than that. I was taking it pretty easy, and apparently too easy. I did get whacked on the head a few times, and kicked pretty hard in the gut by a breast-stroker, but none of that seriously slowed me down. Sighting went fairly well -- it was very easy in the channel as you could sight to the side, and needed look ahead only enough to watch out for packs of swimmers ahead. And in the river it still was not that difficult, nothing compared to ocean swimming. I weaved a bit, but was generally on course. I did swim out into the middle of the river hoping to catch more current, and that was probably a mistake, as there just wasn't much current. I probably should have stayed on the straighter line, but none of these things cost me much time in any case. I just needed to swim harder.

In fact, the only thing that did cost me time (apart from probably just not going hard enough) was that I cramped up, literally 50m from the finish. I accelerated between two swimmers to get to some clear water right before the exit (something I had done successfully several times throughout the swim), and BOOM! My right calf seriously cramped. I kept swimming, kicking with my left leg only and trying to stretch the other at the same time. I must have looked like a wounded fish. I 'hobbled' to the exit and by then at least the cramp had subsided. I just had the residual pain, and immediately started wondering how I was going to live with that all day.

Don't get in line. That was one of only two significant mental mistakes I made all day (that I know about...), and not the most costly, but still rather stupid.

This went fairly smoothly. The volunteer was right there with my bag. I was a bit disorganized, but got it done. I could have done this a minute or two faster, but not much more than that. There was a decent run into T1, and a decent run out.

Just be a bit more efficient. I paused a couple of times to ponder what I was supposed to be doing.

I felt very good about this bike. I kept my HR pretty much where I wanted, though because of the lower temperature, I wasn't 100% sure where I needed to be. It crept into the 140s on some of the steeper longer climbs, but even then, mostly low 140s. I maybe saw 150 once or twice, for just a few seconds. I did stretch my calf several times, as it constantly felt like it was going to cramp, and was quite painful all the way. But it never cramped (again, after the swim).

I also was very happy with how I dealt with the traffic. I'm still not 100% sure how to deal with the situation where you pass someone who was in the draft zone of the person in front of him or her. Technically, this puts me in the position of having to pass the next person as well, which is fine if that person was going the same speed (meaning, the person I just passed was probably drafting), but what if the next person is going faster (for example, that person just passed the person in front of me)? On a less crowded course, I could have waited for the situation to get sorted out (i.e., for the person in front of me to get out of the next person's drafting zone), but here that course of action was just not feasible.

I played it by the letter of the law and passed, and this made for a few accelerations that I would have rather avoided, but none of them was extreme. I did an 'extreme' (hard) acceleration only two times that I can recall, both to get myself clear of congestion that was causing me problems (it was hard to avoid drafting without dropping WAY back and slowing down too much). I don't think any of these accelerations caused me much pain, and I was able to really cruise for the final 20 miles, where things had cleared up quite a bit and the road was nice and flat (where, for some strange reason, I seem to be stronger relative to other riders, even though I really LIKE the hills). The only other real problem I had on the bike was that my sunglasses got messed up and I was seeing double for the final 20 miles. I tried and tried to get them straight, but couldn't. I took them off for a few minutes, but that was even worse, as the sun was fairly bright, and right in my face. So I lived with it. I hit a couple of bumps that I would have seen if my vision were normal, but fortunately there were no serious consequences.

The one odd thing about this ride -- and it must be because the temperature was so much lower than what I have trained in -- was that I had to pee CONSTANTLY. It wasn't until an hour in that I was able to relax enough. And then of course it was important (to me) to be sure no one is too close behind before 'letting fly'. Enough said about that. Maybe I was drinking too much.

In any case, nutrition went very well. I stayed on schedule. I had some very minor stomach pain towards the end, and I was worried that it might get ugly on the run, but I decided that I just had too much sugar in my gut, and I drank some water to dilute it and that seemed to work. I had no further issues.

Nothing, really. Given my level of experience, this ride was great.

Getting off the bike went fine. I did have one minor issue at the end of the ride, when some wanker raced past me (fine) and then immediately after passing slowed WAY down to pull his feet out of his shoes (not fine). Really? You couldn't have done that BEFORE passing? I slowed down to get out of his drafting zone, and he proceeded to fumble almost endlessly around with his shoes, to the point where I got fed up and passed him.

Anyway, I managed to get out of my shoes without (I hope) pissing anybody off. The run to T2 was wobbly, but fine. Nobody had grabbed my bag, but I found it myself pretty quickly. As for T1, I could have been more efficient. My inexperience showed here. But basically, fine.

One thing that I did wrong that turned up only later -- I missed two spots with the sunscreen. Oops. Now I have a pretty ugly sunburn in two places.

Things started off fine. I was taking it pretty easy. I was able to keep HR down below where I expected, probably because of the cooler temps. I was hurting, but nothing that couldn't be ignored. My goal was to run the whole way, even if that meant shuffling. And for the first 20 miles, I ran a fairly steady pace. (I don't quite believe the splits on the IM site -- I think that some of the mile markers were inaccurate.) At mile 20, I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to pick up the pace, and from mile 20 to mile 23 I was running sub 9:00, and was definitely on pace to go well below my 4 hour goal.

Then at mile 23 I seriously hit the wall, and had a major goal readjustment. I shuffled to the aid station at mile 24 and walked that aid station (generously defined as the area beginning 100 yards prior to the aid station and ending 100 yards after it). During that 'run' I had a very sharp pain in my abdomen, which I just ignored. At the time, it seemed gastro-intestinal (and what are you going to do about THAT at mile 24 on the run? nothing!), but I later realized that it was the knot on my tri shorts that had been pressing against the same spot on my gut for the past 12+ hours. Lesson learned.

I then shuffled to the aid station at mile 25 and did the same thing. That second walk, plus the prospect of soon finishing, perked me up a bit and I was able to run at some semblance of a decent pace to the end. One block before the finish I saw my family for the first time that day -- although they had seen me several times, I was never quite able to pick them out of the crowd -- and I high-fived Samuel on the way in. At that moment, seeing my family for the first time that day, and hearing the amazingly loud cheers of the crowd, the ugliness and suffering of the previous 3.2 miles disappeared and it was done. I was quite spacey for a while, but the very kind volunteer who grabbed me at the end took good care of me for a few minutes, and helped me find Misty and the kids.


Picking up the pace at mile 20 was a huge mistake. I should have kept plodding along. I would have finished several minutes faster if I had. In fact, I would have hit my 'A' goal of sub 12 hours if I had. Still, I guess missing that goal by less than 5 minutes isn't bad. I'll take it, and smile.

Pizza, cookie, beer, french fries, cheesecake. Not the greatest recovery food, but it's what I craved. Back to the hotel, clean up. We went back out to cheer for others for a while, then went to bed. We had to drive back to Columbia starting at 6am the next morning...


Experience. I'll get faster.


IM is expensive, no doubt, but these people KNOW how to put on a race. The volunteers were absolutely AMAZING. The organization was as near to flawless as an undertaking of this magnitude can be. The civil service should take lessons from these people. The crowds were fantastic. I loved it, even while I was suffering.