Here is a full report from my Louisville experience. We did the drive down to Louisville in 2 days and arrived on Thursday around 1:00pm and checked into the Galt House Hotel. It was awesome and the first time that I've actually stayed at the official race hotel. We had a huge suite so there was lots of room for bike storage and gear to be spread all over the place. Went for a walk around the downtown and checked out the finish area on 4th St. It is one of the coolest finish areas for an IM with bars all over the place. I was thinking that maybe I would actually be able to stay up until midnight to check out the final finisher after not making it in all 5 of my previous ironman races. I took Thursday as a complete no training day (my first in about 3 months ..... who says triathletes are obsessive-compulsive?). The expo was inside at the Galt House so all I had to do was hop on an elevator anytime I wanted to go there. It was pretty standard with all of the usual expensive souvenirs. Friday morning I put my bike together and went out for a spin. I did 15k and felt scared most of the ride. Downtown hotels and good riding are not a good mix so I bailed on the ride early. Bike was working fine so no need to do any more anyway. Went for an easy 30 minute run with Rachel after the ride and then we found a mall to do some back to school shopping for the squirt. The carbo meal was the usual stuff with one exception .... the guy they brought up on stage for the "weight loss award" lost 201lbs preparing to do the IM .... wow! Saturday I went down for the practice swim. The Ohio River is like swimming in warm chocolate milk. You can't see your fingertips when your arm is extended and it is way too warm for wetsuits. The current was pretty strong during the practice swim. Did another run after the practice swim and then went back to the hotel to get all of my stuff together. After lunch I took all my gear down to the transition for check in. It is a little different than other races that I've done since once you check in your transition bags, you can't get to them on race morning. This meant that I had to strap more stuff onto my bike food-wise on race morning since I didn't want to leave it out all night. On race day I was up at 4:15, had some breakfast then jogged over to transition with my food and pump. Got everything strapped onto the bike and the Garmin started up and catching the signals and my tires at optimum pressure then jogged back to the hotel to drop off my pump. The swim start is 3/4 of a mile down the road from the transition and I jogged down and got there just past 5:30 and got body marked. What a madhouse at this point. Apparently with the first come, first served appraoch to getting into the water some folks started lining up around 3:30-4:00 (totally crappy race preparation!). By the time I got into line I was at least a km from the swim start. This meant that when I finally got into the water there were likely around 2000 people ahead of me and I started about 37 minutes after the first age group athlete. The swim was a nightmare. The current had completely died down from the previous day so it was no help when I finally got to the turnaround. The number of people that I had to pass and swim around was adding a lot of time to an already slow swim (that Boston marathon prep left me behind the 8 ball in my swim prep this year). I had to go around 3 guys swimming side stroke and a few do elementary backstroke (why enter an IM if you can't actually swim the distance properly?). Anyway, I hit the step to exit the river in 1:12 which was my slowest IM swim ever by 6 minutes which was discouraging. Once I got on the bike things started looking up. I was constantly passing people for the first 60k. The out and back section was pretty congested and scary on the hills when you're trying to pass slower riders and other racers are bombing down the hill towards you barely on the other side of the yellow line. The time trail start did help a lot with respect to the drafting problems you see at many IM races since I saw very few packs forming. The bike course has pretty good quality pavement and lots of rolling hills. The final 10k or so is very flat so you can spin it out prior to the transition. On the bike, I went 2:41:37 for the first 90k and ended up 5:18:03 so a big negative split and I felt like I was holding back the entire ride which was good. As I pulled into transition my left leg cramped quite a bit which worried me a little for the run. I had a slower than normal T2 thanks to a stop in the porta-john and decided to go out hard on the run to loosen up the left leg and see if all my early season marathon training would pay off. I felt amazingly good and fresher than I ever have at the beginning of an IM run. I ended up going through the first half just over 1:27 and was still on pace to break 3 hours at 19 miles. I started to falter a bit then and went for some Coke at 20. They hadn't let it go flat so it was awful! By mile 24 I was slowing but still at 2:50 so I figured a 3:05 was in the cards. I was counting my chickens too soon since just after this point my entire right leg from hamstring down to my ankle cramped violently and forced me to walk. I walked for a few minutes then looked at my watch and said to hell with it, I was still going for a sub-3:10. I did a sort of hop/hobble/shuffle thing for about half a mile and then it loosened up enough for me to start running again (31 years of running experience came through big time). I was sprinting as best as I could down the final straight and finished the run in 3:09:23 and the race in 9:48:54. I was stoked to have my first sub 3:10 in an IM race! Final place 49th overall and 4th in 40-44. Afterwards the official time had me one minute slower on the run and overall. I found a number of other people with the same issue and we contacted the folks at ironman. They were awesome and checked into the problem and by today all of the age group people had their times adjusted. It seems the timing mat exiting from T2 was off by 1 minute for all of the age group athletes but accurate for the pros. After I left the finish area I went over to the food/massage/medical area in the convention centre a block away. My legs felt awful so I decided to get a massage. As soon as I got on the massage table I started cramping everywhere ... legs, lats, chest ..... The massage therapist asked if I needed to go to the medical area and I said no but then I had trouble talking since my tongue was swelling up and I was shivering and shutting down so I changed my mind. They had to lift me over since I couldn't get up. Once there I avoided an IV (they said I wan't delerious so they'd wait and see if I came around without one) but was wrapped up in 3 blankets and fed lots of Gatorade, chicken broth, and pizza for 45 minutes or so until I started to feel better then was able to hobble out and get some dry clothes. A few hours later, after picking up my bike and having dinner, I went back to 4th St. and made it to midnight to cheer on the final athletes. IM Lousiville has a great party atmosphere with the Hard Rock and another sports bar right there.On Monday, I went down and got my photos and walked by the Kona registration where I was tempted for a split second, but I made someone's day by letting the slot roll down. After the awards we headed straight back and I got home just past 2am (12.5 hours in the car seemed like IM part 2). By the time we got unpacked and into bed I managed about 3 hours of sleep before getting up to teach my students on their first day of school .... they likely thought their math teacher is some kind of cripple.
Overall, I thought the race was excellent and would recommend it. The time trail start needs a few glitches fixed (maybe corrals sort of like Boston?) but I saw way less drafting on the bike than any other IM race that I've ever done so maybe it is not a bad compromise.