Weekend Adventures – Rode Louisville Bike Course

I visited my brother’s family in Indiana over the weekend.
 

Keith, Kayla, me and the kids

They live about an hour from Louisville so I took advantage of that, rented a bike and rode most of the Louisville Ironman Bike course.  The course description says “Athletes will be challenged with plenty of rolling hills”.  “Plenty” is an understatement!  Except for about the first and last 10 miles of the course it is all rolling hills, so probably about 90 miles are rollers. 

I rode 61.1 miles of the 112 mile course in 4 hours flat at a moderate to hard effort.  My legs were definitely burning from all the rollers.  My average speed was 15.3 mph.  The stats below are from my Garmin.  Green shows the elevation changes.  All those little bumps are the rolling hills.  It may not look like much but, over time and distance, I really started feeling them.  The blue chart shows my speed.  You can see it was not a steady pace – up, down, up, down…  It is a good pic to see how many rollers are on the course.    The yellow chart shows my cadence (avg 85 rpm).  It was fairly steady even on the rollers and I am pleased about that.  Where you see gaps in the cadence is where I was coasting – I pedaled most of this 60 miles - even the downhill parts of the rollers 

I am so glad I got the opportunity to scout this course.  I need to work on shifting/not shifting and maintaining better speed as I go uphill.  I also need to balance how much effort to put out on the bike while keeping in mind that I still need to run a marathon at the end of this ride.  YIKES! :)

It’s a really pretty course that runs through the horse farms.  I stopped one time and took this pic.  The field had 3 mommas with their babies.  Not a great picture (need zoom) - this duo was very curious about me.

After spending a day in Louisville, I had a couple swim and run workouts but, the rest of the time was spent enjoying family.  We went to an amusement park and rode many rides.  Roller coasters were a big hit.  I went on most of the rides with the kids and luckily did not end up with any stiffness, soreness or whiplash!  HA!

Cassie and me

Jace and me

Pat and Jace laughing because Kayla and I just got soaked!

When I got home I had a nice surprise from my sister.  She planted all my flower pots while we were gone.  So nice and pretty too!

What were your adventures this weekend?

What is an Ironman?

I have been asked a few questions about the Ironman by different people over the past few weeks and wondered if others had questions too.  So here are a few tidbits about the Ironman with some specifics about the Louisville IM (which I am doing). 

There are many Ironman races throughout the world.  The one most people know about is in Kona, Hawaii, the Ironman World Championship.  To race in Kona an athlete must qualify by placing in the top 1-X spots in their age group in another IM event.   The process for picking the age group athletes is interesting.  The day after their IM event they must show up at the transition area where IM officials call out the names of people who have qualified in a particular age group.  At that time, the athlete must say “Yes” or “No” to going to the Kona World Championships.  If they say “no”, then the next name on the list is called and this continues until all the slots are taken .

Ironman is a triathlon that combines swimming, biking and running events which all need to be completed in one day.  Total distance = 140.6 miles!

• Swim: 2.4 miles
• Bike: 112 miles
• Run: 26.2 miles (marathon distance)

Ironman races typically start at 7:00 a.m. and must be completed in 17 hours (midnight the same day).  There are some exceptions to this start time – the Louisville IM starts at 7:30 a.m. and still must be completed by midnight.  The later start times usually apply to races in the fall after Daylight Savings time kicks in – they don’t want people swimming when it’s still dark.

All Ironman races have cut-off times for each event.  Following are the cut-off times for the Louisville IM.

• Swim - must be completed in 2 hours 20 minutes
• Bike - The Louisville bike course is shaped like a lollipop and the lollipop loop is done twice.  There are two cut-off times for the bike:
• 2:45 p.m. - Must be at mile 60 (starting 2^nd loop of the lollipop).  7 hours 15 minutes after starting the swim.
• 6:20 p.m. - Bike course officially closes
• Run - The Louisville run course is 2 laps of 13.1 miles.   There are two cut-off times for the run:
•  Lap 1 – Must be completed by 9:45 p.m.  14 hours 15 minutes after starting the swim.
•  Lap 2 – Must be completed by midnight – the course officially closes.

Do you have any other questions about the IM?