Ironman Louisville Race Report Part 1 – Bags, Bags, and More Bags!

For those just joining my blog, I completed the 2009 Ironman Louisville on August 30, 2009. It was my first Ironman race. Here is my race report. This is long overdue! For those of you that were wondering what happened to me at Ironman Louisville, I survived, beat my goal time by an hour, and am looking forward to doing another Ironman distance race.

We arrived at Louisville the Friday before the race. For those of you planning on doing an Ironman, it's important to note that you must register and check in for the race 2 days prior to the race, so plan your travel accordingly.

When checking in for the race they use one of those Tanita body fat scales to check your hydration level to make sure you are properly hydrated going into the race. My readings on the scale were 18% BF, 54% water, and 130lbs. I believe they said they wanted 45-60% hydration for women and 50-65% for men. I passed that test with flying colors and got checked in for the race without a problem.

The expo was okay. It was not as big or as nice as I expected. I did not see anything there that I absolutely had to buy nor were there any great deals. I didn't purchase anything from the expo prior to the race, but did hit it after the race to purchase some of the "Finisher" merchandise. Another note for those doing Ironman: they put out a ton of stuff at the expo the day after the race, that is better than most of the stuff they have prior to the race, so don't spend all of your money prior to the race.

On Friday, it was time to check my bike and gear in. They give you 3 gear bags and 2 special needs bags. One gear bag for your stuff you wear to the race site in the morning, 1 gear bag for T1, and 1 gear bag for T2. You get 1 special needs bag for the bike leg, which they give to you at about the halfway point and 1 for the run, which is also at the halfway point. It all must go in your gear bags. You are not allowed to put any gear by your bike. It all must go in your gear bags.

A big question that I got from people after I did the race was, "What was your nutrition plan?" My biggest piece of advice is that everyone is different, and it is best to experiment and practice during your training in order to determine what works best for you, so please don't count on using my nutrition plan or anyone else's nutrition plan for a race without testing it on yourself first. I have a sensitive stomach, so I pretty much know what I can and can't eat prior to a race and during a race. For example, I cannot drink Gatorade when I run, but I can drink it on the bike. Another note about your race nutrition plan, it should probably begin a few days before the race. For example, it's a good idea to avoid fiber, dairy, raw vegetables, and anything else that is difficult to digest the day or two leading up to a race. Often people will have gastric distress on race day and think it is their race day nutrition that messed them up, when in fact it was something they ate the day before the race. Remember it takes about 24 hours for food to make it all the way through your system.

I ate a big pasta dinner on Friday before the race and then ate light on Saturday. On race morning I drank about a bottle of water and ate a bagel and banana. I carried 6 nutritional items with me on my bike, pretzels, peanut butter crackers, Gu, Gu Chomps, Nuun, and Water. Nuun is an electrolyte only drink. It doesn't have any carbs. If you can't stomach Gatorade, you might want to check it out. I at every 45 min. – 1 hour on the bike and just ate what I felt like eating. I ate about 2 packages of peanut butter crackers, a bag of pretzels, 4 Gus, and 3 packages of Gu Chomps. I drank about 2 bottles of Nuun and 2 bottles of water, and about a half of bottle of Gatorade that I picked up at an aid station. My philosophy was eat and drink as much as possible until I reached about mile 90 on the bike. Then give my stomach from mile 90-112 to settle, as to avoid having issues on the run. It worked!

I carried a bottle of Nuun with me on the run and grabbed water at the aid stations. I used 3 Gus and grabbed some pretzels and grapes every once and awhile at the aid stations. I felt like I was well fueled and hydrated throughout the race.

I did fill up my special needs bags and did stop and get them, but did not use any items out of my bags. They actually slowed me down quite a bit, because I yelled out the wrong race number on the bike, (my fault) and I got someone else's bag and had to take it back and get mine. On the run, they gave me the wrong bag , and I had to do the same thing. Probably lost 10 minutes dealing with those silly bags. If you are really trying to hit a time goal, I wouldn't use the bags except in an emergency. I did back a spare tube and tire in my bike bag, so I was able to recover my $50 tire, but that was really the only good thing about picking up the bag. When I finally got the correct run bag, I just threw it in the trash. I have no idea why I even picked it up!


More tomorrow!