On August 30, 2009 I finished Ironman Louisville with a decent time of 10:35:55 - 24 of 397 in my age group and 176 of 2347 overall. I started to write that “I have no idea how I managed to do this time” but if you are reading this report then you probably know me which means you know that is complete bs. Here is the story.
Monday August 24
I will start on Monday before the race. At 10:30 Jill and I left the house to go to Central Baptist Hospital to get Jill's collar bone rebuilt. This was a stressful start to the week. After 7 weeks of waiting to see if her shoulder would heal from the bike wreck on her birthday the doctor finally decided that she had to start all over with a major surgery where a metal plate and bunch of screws were inserted into her collar bone through a 5 inch hole. I was very concerned over the next couple of days because the pain medicine and anesthesia made her sick. It would have been totally unfair to make her wander around an Ironman site all day long – sick and in pain. But as it turns out, she is amazingly tough mentally and physically and by the weekend felt well enough to go to the race. I love tough women.
Saturday August 29 – 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Things were a little bit crazy to start the Ironman weekend. I first drove to Lexington to pickup my bike at my pushers aka the local bike shop aka Schellers in Lexington. I have been making bike setup changes like crazy in the weeks leading up to the event. In the three weeks before the race I put on
1.A new aero bar setup (3T Brezza)
2.New brake levers (SRAM Red Carbon)
3.New bearings in the wheels and rear dérailleur (ceramic speed)
4.Salt stick dispensers
5.A new Garmin 705 mount system
6.Removed water bottles (from down tube and Arundel 2 bottle holder from behind the seat)
7.Added/changed tool kit setup
8.Switched to latex tubes
It was really insane to make this many changes in the weeks/days leading up to the event. Obviously it was a risk but each of them should have a positive impact on my speed. The risk was mitigated by the fact that Andy Lanier at Schellers is an amazing bike mechanic, very detail oriented and also very confident. After picking up my bike I rode about 15 miles at 210 watts to loosen up the legs. It was also nice to verify that all of the changes were OK. I then ran for 15 minutes and felt fine.
After the shakedown ride I headed home to finish getting things together. This ended up taking longer than I would have liked and we didnt leave for Louisville until 12:30. That morning I attached my number with an “official usat number bracket” that was zip tied to the seatpost. On the way to Louisville we stopped at Panera to get Cinnamon crunch bagels – my favorite prerace food.
Twenty miles down the road I was looking out the window when I realized that disaster had struck. My new toolbag which was attached to the seat had fallen off somewhere on the interstate. That was a little bit less than optimal because I had zero extra backups. It was also irritating because I had used up too much time margin getting ready in the morning and things were going to be closer than I liked getting checked in at transition (yes I have time issues). After some hand wringing, iphone web searches, a few phone calls we figured out that Schellers had a location in Louisville close to where we were... so we went there, bought new stuff, got it attached and got rolling.
At the race site Jill and I went over the bike to make sure that things were cool before checking it into transition. She pointed out that there was a zip tie holding on the number that might be a problem... I really really should learn to listen to her better on these kinds of things because she is awesome at noticing things that will be a problem (like in transition). But I said “oh dont worry about it … it isnt a problem”
Saturday August 29 – 6:00 PM
I had arranged to have dinner with John and Mary at Vincensos. It is a lovely white table cloth Italian restaurant on 5th street. I had gnocci with gorgonzola lite crème sauce, a Ceaser salad, much bread, Veal Saltimbocca and a Bombay Sapphire Martini. Killer. Even better we celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. After dinner it was back to the hotel. A benadryl and 2 Tylenol PM... then an early bedtime.
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