Great race for your first IM. Congratulations.

The IMFL "flat" bike course is deceptivly hard.

1. It's still 112 miles

2. The wind tends to kick up in the last 50 miles after being dead calm for the first half.

3. The temperature tends to soar in the second half of the bike after being cold to cool at the start

4. Riding in one gear, at the same RPM and in the same position for 112 miles causes it's own set of problems.

Many people get off the bike at IMFL and are a wreck. They then end up running quite slow and are shocked at their time in what they thought would be an "easy" IM race.

Fleck

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Great Post JSmith,

I have done IMF 4x but not this year. Its discouraging to find out they still have not done something to prevent the swim course from being shortened. I understand how the second lap could be cut short by people returning to the water heading out to the wrong buoy. But I think this could be prevented by three simple additions:

1. Have the race officials addressing it in the pre race meeting

2. Have 3-4 kayaks in the water to guide/direct/coerce people to swim around the first buoy.

3. Set-Up additional buoys that angle the swim route to the correct turn buoy.

I do not condone the cutting of the course but I can understand how it happened. I swim slow enough that I was swimming w/o crowds returning the water on the second lap, and it is not confusing as to the buoy you need to swim around.

I am confused on how people cut the swim course on the first lap?

Peace,

RF

Fleck, thanks for your congrats...I am happy with my race. I really wanted to run a 3:40 marathon but had the stomach issues. Oh well, it gives me something to shoot for next time. I do realize that in order for the 3:40 to happen in Wisconsin next year I have to get much stronger on the bike.

I hear you on the part about riding in the same gear at the same RPM. I laughed to myself at one point on the course when I realized that I had not changed gears for over 2 hours!