Extremely Long for sure.
Ironman Number 28.
First I would like to thank all the folks who drove to louisville to cheer us on
So thanks to Brandon,Layla,Gayle,Barb Blum,Cecil and Jeremy and Adams family.
PRERACE and the SWIM.
I spent most of the week of the race stressing about things I have no control over.. You'd figure after 27 of these I'd have figured that out but guess not.
I was worried about it being cold since I'd trained in the heat of the day and specifically for a hot day and morning temps were threatening to be in high 50's to low 60's ealier in the week then
creeped up to mid 60's for the low.. It was going to be cold for me.
I had hoped for a nice hot day but was not to be but there were a couple of moments on the run leaving downtown on both loops when the wind was at our backs I got hot and thought "I'm sure glad it wasn't as hot as it could be" So ya never know.
I was also hopeing for wetsuits for my slower than normal slow swimming due to the shoulder dislocation. I'd only swam three 2000 meter swims in the weeks before the race and each wore me out both arms hurt when I swim the left one makes clicks and pops.
Wasn't sure I my arms could hold up to 2.4 mile swim.
So much wasted energy for sure and for the most part none of it was a factor come race day.
So Saturday afternoon I took my bike and gear bags down to the transition area.
The Great Lawn is an awesome transition area with a great view overlooking the river.
It was avery nice day compared to 2007 when a storm came through during bike check in.
I ran into Brian,Joy and Nancy checking their bikes in.
Was cool they gave us each an escort who also guided us through the whole transition area and make sure we knew our way around race day.
Heres my bike location WOW what a view:
After turning in my bike and walking back to the hotel I drove out east to met up with a cousin I hadn't seen in over 20 years.
We had dinner at 6:00 at a nice place on the river right where bike course passed by.
I kept mine simple just a bbq chicken pizza and water didn't want a repeat of Lake Placid
last year where dinner at our hotel didn't quite agree with me probably because of all the bread I ate waiting on dinner. I usually like to keep prerace dinner simple and same as any other meal normally eat every day like a chicken sandwich and baked potato.
Long story short I didn't get back to the hotel until after 11:00PM still had to get my cameras setup ,charge some batteries , prepare my race day nutrition and morning and start race clothes ready.
Had a bad headache just like before lake placid so wasn't feeling too confident about sunday.
I took some tylenol and a little caffiene finally got in bed 12:30am with wash rag and ice on my head. I guess I finallly fell asleep then the alarm goes off at 4:30am.
The headache was gone so I got up started on my calories (2 boosts,a bagel and a power bar) and some coffee.
I was meeting Joy and Jeremy at 5:15 down in the lobby so Jeremy could drive us down to the start.
It was still dark when we arrived at the transition area where I proceeded straight to my bike
to set up the cameras,tape my gel flask on my toptube and put on my water bottles and bike shoes.
Was annoying as hell having the announcer blaring over the speakers about how much time we had and that there were fewer athletes coming and every body needs to start heading to the swim start. Made it hard to concentrate on what I had to get done.
The bike racks are too low and seems everyone requires us to mount our bikes by the seats
these days(I remember the old days when handlebars were the prefered method.
I prefer the handle bars because its more sturdy and easy to get off the rack.
When you mount by the seat and you have behind the seat water bottles its sometimes difficult
to get the seat back under the pole. I had just that problem because I needed to get take mine off to put the shoes on the pedals and mount my rear camera.(which was all for naught since it didn't take any video).
Here is picture of me panicking by my trusty steed.
Took a few pics of my bike and Joy and I and off to meet Jeremy to drive us down to the race start.
It's about .75 miles walk down the road or upstream to the swim start but luckily we got a ride.
It was still dark when we got down there so you couldn't really see the long line just yet.
We got to the swim start where volunteers were ready to number us. Thats used to be very slow chaotic process but seemed to go quite well.
After numbering we started our hike to the end of the line.
It seemed we walked forever just to get to the end of the line it was so long we were all way around then on the street.
We found the end it was still a while before the race started and was still dark
So off I went the long walk to the porta johns back down the line.
While on my way I ran into the rest of the memphis gang and the folks who came down to watch in line and stopped to take some pics.
The line looked really long for porta johns I was thinking I'm never going to get in one then I realized there were small 3 or 4 people lines every few pj's not one big line.
So heres my traditionional porta john picture(I've made it a tradition now to take a photo at every race from inside the porta john(head shot only).
How about that hair think thats from sleeping on the cold ice wash rag or lightening is about to strike me.
I went back to the line where I sawy the gang they had moved up further even though therace hadn't started but I think familys and friends had gotten out and the first athletes were staged down at the marina. I called Joy told her where we were and said I was going to jump in here and no one seemed to notice.They had volunteers to take your dry clothes bag so I took off my jacket,shorts and shirt and shoes stuffed them in the bag and handed it off.
It was a little chilly but not as bad as I thought it would be.
I realized at that moment I forgot to leave my arm warmers on my aero bars and I'm going to freeze.... oh well nothing I can do about it now.
Took a picture of the latest terp iron virgin Adam I wonder if he knew what he was getting into. That smile I'd see later as he put on the big sprint at the finish line.
The line started moving pretty fast now so I took some video along the way.
I stopped to take some video of adam and brian and adam jumping off the first dock before heading over to the other dock myself.
So goggles on and garmin 310XT all setup(at least I thought) get ready go when I jumped off time was 7:17am and change so it only took 17 minutes to get into the water not bad 2007 we were way up there and it took 10 minutes so this was fast.
Noteing that time would come in handy later in providing information along with race photographs that the swim mat timeing was off by a minute and everyones official time was slower by a minute than their actual time. Also comes in handy if the my garmin timer gets off I can always to the math based on time of day for where I am in the race time wise.
After I jumped in I took a moment to get out of the way of others and did short video of the docks and around me before heading out sort of a swimmers view.(see end of video above).
My swim plan was based on having a current and to stay clear of others.
I planned on swimming way right closer to the shore where the current should be less upstream.
When I reached just past the islands end the plan was to increase stroke frequency (less glide)
and work hard to get to the turn while swimming against the current then recover after the turn downstream.
I get to the end of the island I check my time so can see how long to get to turn and back to the island to see affect of current. Time at the end of the island was about 18 minutes.
2007 I made the turn in 37 minutes so I thought man 19 minutes left to get to turn man I'm slow?
I stayed to the right could barely see red bouy at turn way up there and the shore juts out a bit so I had to angle some to go around that.
So I'm chugging along then and hit a few cold spots thought there must be a drainage ditch or something hope its not toxic kept my mouth shut for sure.
It was pretty cold for a little while but I just kept swimming and started noticing folks standing up and walking I guess we were hitting a sandbar and then my hand hit bottom.
I figured you can swim faster than walk in water so I kept swimming makeing my way left to deeper water also was afraid might step on glass or something.
About that time someone yelled "watch out for the stump" bam I hit it with my hand luckily didn't swim direftly over it would have hit my chest that would have sucked.
I HIT the turn bouy look at my watch 28 minutes..
Holy crap I'm 9 minutes faster than 2007 maybe my plan worked my swims going to be faster than I thought(NOT)... as I started wondering if there even was a current today there was saturday morning when we swam.
Once I made the turn I headed right working my way out into the open river as we went downstream(if you can call it that) to take advantage of faster current but it sure didn't feel fast
like in 2007.
When I got in line with the end of the island the time was 39 minutes tha means it took me roughly the same amount of time to do the same distance upstream as downstream somethings not right wheres the current..
My arms were starting to feel what was now becoming my longest swim since last november at ironman florida. The left shoulder wasn't popping which was good but was feeling tired as my right arm was getting sore along the bicep.
I was pretty much by myself occasionally would see a swimmer up ahead to the right or left with the majority of swimmers swimming along the bouys while I supposedly was taking advantage of the faster current.
Was bit lonely out there but the alternative I did not care for getting kicked and swimming around people and visa versa. Was clear the whole way until the last say 100 meters or so.
I stopped to get some video and one of the swim support guys laying on his kayak asked if I was okay so I told him I'm find just getting some video shots.
Finally I got under the first bridge which looked like an old railroad bridge thats no longer in use I believe it caught fire a few years ago.
Once I got past the bridge I stopped to take some more video and check the current.
I wasn't moving at all there was NO CURRENT..
The Second bridge was the i-65 bridge I stopped again to check current and get some video then my right calf cramped I though dang I'm sinking panicked just a few seconds then thought dude you can float on your back. So put the camera away quit kicking and got back to swimming..
Cramp never returned luckily but I still quit kicking for a while just in case.
As we got close to the swim finish it started getting a little more crowded as I merged into the swimmers who swam the bouy line.
Then all of a sudden a few waves came buy I guess from one of the support boats that wasn't nice.
I stopped to take some video of some of the crowd along the shore but I'd take this over ironman florida at the turns anyday.
Finally got to the swim exit and climbed up the stairs and turned the camera on once more for the transition. Saw my time 1:26.. dang that was slow but I expected it with the shoulder thing so I was okay with that in 2007 I went 1:22 on very little swimming but the current helped alot this
time there was no current. My arms were feeling pretty tired but the show must go on.
Ran the long run to get my bag and to the change tent..
So it's socks on, new terp jersey(like that full length zipper) and sun glasses and I was off. I put the glasses on while running then zipped up the jersey while running to save time.
I had put a transition bag in my bag to stuff in my skin suit to help insulate my core from the cold which worked great had it the entire ride.
I had done this at florida back in november and thrown it half way into the bike this time I kept it until I got back to transition after the bike.
WTC allows us to put our helmet on the bike and shoes on the pedals so I didn't have to worry about those right now.
got the camera out and took some more video of me running to my bike.
I get to my bike grab my helmet then grab the bike which took me a while to slide it under the mount bar since the bar was low with all the wieght.
Turned one of my front cameras on and started it on video then the rear camera(at least I thought) and off I went.
I've been experimenting with overlaying some of my gps track information over video.
Its tedious especially with non continous video and I have to interpolate between track points
so you get values every second that will change in relation to the time period between tracks.
I'm still in the testing phase right now but you will see elapsed time,speed,altitude and my heart rate. Its only for a guide and for fun so no comments about its accuracy its close might be seconds off at times but in general close enough.
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