It finally arrived, the finale to my 2015 triathlon season and what a great season it has been. Training for a late season Ironman was certainly a different experience than last year where I had a mid-summer Ironman in July. The largest chunk of my training this year was during peak heat and humidity causing me to doubt my fitness at times due to my slower times but also requiring me to be smart about my training and ensuring that my hydration and nutrition were keyed in.
I’ll admit that in the months leading into Ironman Louisville I didn’t feel excited about it. I’m not sure if it was because this was my second IM so I didn’t have the excitement and anticipating of hearing Mike Reilly announcing me as an Ironman, if it was the change in location – I mean how can you possibly compete with the beautiful Lake Placid course, or if it was due to having a less tight knit group training for the event… probably a combination of all three. It was a long season with 6 other triathlons, a half-marathon, and 3 bike centuries – I love racing so that was a definite benefit of a late season Ironman. I headed out to Ohio over a week before the race due to a family wedding so the whole week prior to Ironman I got the opportunity to hit up some extra hills at Hueston Woods State Park.
On Thursday, 08OCT my husband flew into Dayton and I swung by to pick him up on the way to Louisville. We rented a beautiful industrial/modern style home just a couple blocks from the Ironman Village and a half-mile away from transition and the finish. We got in late on Thursday and after getting the key to the home we went to Jack Fry’s for dinner – my husband cannot stop raving about it – I had the escargot and the Heirloom Chicken in a sweet tea brine with ricotta gnocchi, pesto cream, and broccoli. This set off the weekend on a great note – we had a beautiful home to stay in and the food in Louisville was very good.
On Friday morning we had breakfast at Wild Egg, which was just behind where we were staying, I had the omelet and cheesy grits. Then we headed down for packet pickup, which was well organized. Unfortunately, when I got to the Ironman store at 10am all of the women’s small cycling jersey’s were already gone (bummer). 
I drove the bike course with Dai (my coach), his wife Denise (our expert navigator and sherpa), and my teammate Katie. Then I came back to the house and relaxed until it was time for the Athlete’s Welcome Banquet. The banquet was okay, the food was surprisingly good for a buffet but the acoustics of the room made it near impossible to hear anything that the speakers said.
Saturday morning I met Dai and Katie for the practice swim which went well other than it being a bit chilly while I waited for them to arrive. I swam down to the first buoy and back, despite numerous warnings from people about how awful the Ohio River is I didn’t think it was bad at all – no funky taste/smell or debris in the water. My parents and sister arrived in time for a quick lunch at Jimmy Johns (Tuna on whole grain w/avocado & sprouts). Then I met Dai and Katie for a quick bike ride along River Road for an equipment check and we used the ride to help gauge the new WTC drafting zone rule about a mandatory spacing of 5 bike lengths between bikes – the previous rule was 3 bike lengths. Also the amount of time allowed upon entering the “draft zone” was changed from 15 seconds to 20 seconds so we practiced doing passes to make sure we were able to do so within the allotted time (almost doubling the distance but only allowing an additional 5 seconds cut it much closer than previously). After the ride I finished packing up my bike and run gear bags and dropped my bike off in transition.
As I was leaving transition I spotted my friend Kelly who I’d met on the podium at a race last year so we chatted for a bit and took a photo. Then my family and I walked down to 4th Street Live planning to do dinner at Gordon Biersch but they said it would be a 1.5hr wait so we walked back and my husband picked up pizza, garlic knots, and root beer from an authentic NY pizza joint. Then I was in bed just after 9pm.
I woke up around 3:45am and went back to sleep for another 20min. Took a quick shower, braided my hair, ate my routine oatmeal and OJ for breakfast and sipped some of the Starbucks cold brew that my hubby picked up for me (I weaned myself off coffee prior to the race so it would have a larger effect on race day). We arrived at transition at around 5:30am, my husband took my bike special needs to drop off and I put my nutrition on my bike, pumped my tires, turned on my Garmin Edge 520 and calibrated the power meter. While I was doing all of that I recognized the girl a few bikes down (rather I recognized her bike) from one of the many triathlon facebook groups I’m a part of and talked to her a bit, it was her first IM so I wished her luck and headed out of transition. I spotted Katie and Dai just outside of transition so we began the walk to transition with my family. I also said a quick hi to my friend Keith who was also racing – he also did IM Lake Placid with me last year. We stopped at body marking then my mom wished me luck and headed back to transition to volunteer in the T1 Women’s Changing Tent. The swim start at Ironman Louisville is about 1 mile from the finish/transition area so it was a long walk but finding the end of 
the swim line was the real challenge. The start at Louisville is first come first serve, you start swimming based on when you get in line. Most Ironman races have a 17hr limit but due to the late sunrise in Louisville for October (7:48am) the swim start isn’t until 7:30am so if you are the first person in line for the swim you’ll only get 16hrs 30min… the later you get in the water for the swim the less time you have to finish before the deadline at midnight. While I wasn’t worried about the midnight cutoff, this perpetuated the issue of slower athletes who were worried about the cutoff trying to get at the front of the line for the swim. Unfortunately this also creates the issue of faster athletes climbing over the slower ones in the water and created backups in the bike course as the faster athletes that started later are trying to pass the slower cyclists on the course creating significant congestion for the first 20-30 miles of the bike…. more on that later. We ended up near the middle of the swim line but unfortunately there were no porta-potties anywhere nearby since they were all at the swim start. I didn’t want to walk the 0.6 miles to them so I resorted to peeing in the grass after donning my wetsuit – it just runs down the leg of the wetsuit and out the bottom near my ankle into the grass.
I peed a total of 3-4 times while in line so I think I can say I was well hydrated at the start. I’m apparently not the only one that used this method, however unfortunately my fellow athletes decided not to move off the sidewalk into the grass so we all had the pleasure of walking through their pee, some of us barefoot. I was also disappointed in the large amount of trash that my fellow athlete and spectators left lining the sidewalk along the line (shame on them for not picking up their trash and taking it with them to throw away). This was Katie’s first Ironman so she had the same excitement I had the first time around while this time I was surprisingly calm and looking forward to testing myself out on the course. Once the race started the line was moving forward quickly, we linked arms as we walked down the ramp to the swim start (the medal ramp was freezing cold). I took the first pier and Katie continued on to the 2nd pier – I wouldn’t see her again until the last few miles of the run. I reached the end of the pier and jumped in making sure to hold my goggles on as I jumped into the water.
I popped back up to the surface and thought to myself “here we go!” I had put my chapstick down the front of my tri suit earlier but I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work as it was digging into my breast bone so after about 10 strokes I stopped briefly to pull my chapstick up so it wasn’t digging in and continued on. I swam close to the island and had very little contact with other swimmers other than one isolated and accidental hit to the face. It seemed like forever to get past the island. Since the water was so much warmer than the air temperature there was a mist hovering over the water, which was around 69F and the air temperature was 46F. The mist looked really cool but once past the island it made it difficult to spot the swim buoys as it was also still fairly dark being just after sunrise. The turn buoy was black and I kept thinking I saw it but each buoy I arrived at was yellow, it took 25min for me to finally reach the turn buoy. Shortly after making the turn my left calf felt like it was going to cramp so every 6-9 strokes or so I would flex my foot to keep my calf from cramping, I continued to do this until around the first bridge. I did have some contact after making the turn as well, two or three times I got stuck between men that were blocking my way so I had to slow down or stop to get around them.
Under the last bridge there was a boat on the left side that was yelling at us to move to the right onto the other side of the buoys and they kept moving the boat towards the buoys (away from shore) essentially forcing us to move further right (hence my almost 90-degree course change under the second bridge). There was nothing mentioned in the athlete guide nor at the athlete briefing stating that athletes needed to keep the sighting buoys to our left side, so after I got past the boat I continued on my original course towards the swim exit. Finally, I made it to the swim exit and swam up the leftmost stairs where a volunteer who was halfway in the water wearing a wetsuit guided me onto the bottom step. I finished the swim in 1:11:46, around 3 minutes faster than my first Ironman. I was expecting to go a bit faster especially with all the talk of the fast current on the way back but I felt no noticeable current the entire swim and many others expressed the same afterwards. Coming out of the water I was 31st in my Age Group (F30-34), 197th Female, and 825th Overall.
Around 15 yards after getting out of the water were the wetsuit strippers, I ran up to the first one but since it was so close to the exit I hadn’t had time to get my wetsuit off of my upper body yet and in the rush somehow got my wetsuit strap wrapped around my Garmin 920xt watch preventing me from getting my wetsuit sleeve off my left arm – once I got it sorted out I laid down and the wetsuit stripper pulled it off, in retrospect it would have probably been faster to just skip the wetsuit stripper so I could have taken the top part of my suit off during the long run to transition and it would have saved me time to just do it myself. I ran into transition, grabbed my bike transition bag (which I had strategically outlined in peacock duct tape) and headed into the women’s transition tent. Holy crap was it crowded, much more than at Lake Placid last year and I thought that was bad. It took me a bit to get through to the other end of the tent and with no open chairs or available volunteers I found a small spot of open grass (literally like 1ft x 2ft) and dumped out my bag. I put my Desoto arm cooler wrap on, my chamois crème, bike gloves, socks & bike shoes, my sunglasses (which immediately fogged up and I had to wipe clear), then my helmet, threw my wetsuit, goggles, and swim cap into the bag and then ran out of the tent tossing it at the entrance. Then made a very quick stop at the sunscreen tent to get the back and front of my neck covered in sunscreen (which I probably didn’t need). Then I ran on to get my bike, found my row immediately ran down the long transition exit, to the mount line and I was off. I think this may officially be my slowest T1 time ever in over 40 triathlons… 0:07:43.
At the start of the bike course the road is very rough with potholes and gaps in the pavement with bad patch jobs there’s no dropping down into aero until getting past this stretch. As I suspected the bike course was quite crowded and I felt like I spent the entire bike course passing a lot of people that had started at the front of the swim line but were clearly middle to back of the pack cyclists. I was focused on maintaining my watts and did well until getting to the out and back where it was so insanely crowded I couldn’t focus on much other than just trying to maneuver through the field. Early into the out and back I was came up on two females, one was going just slightly slower than me and the other significantly so. I yelled on your left and passed the first female who then jumped behind me to also pass the 2nd woman, just ahead to my left was a race photographer and as my front wheel was about even with her back when the 2nd female suddenly swerved towards me and both me and the 1st woman yelled at her to stay to the right and she said something to the effect of “oh oops, gotta get a good photo”. Ugh, no situational awareness whatsoever. I totally get that everyone has different goals for their race, some are very competitive, some are working hard to beat the cutoffs, and others are out there to just enjoy the experience, and apparently others to get good photos paying no mind that they almost caused a pileup. The out and back has the largest hills, nothing bad compared to what I’ve done in previous races but you had to be very alert on this stretch because it was by far the most crowded part of the course containing the most diverse skill levels of athletes making it a treacherous section. I made it to the turnaround of the out and back with no issues, as I was making the turn my left foot unclipped and I almost went down but caught myself and continued on hardly skipping a beat. After the fastest/longest decent on the course I started climbing, there weren’t many people around me at all and my aero bottle was empty so I was refilling it when I heard a guy approaching from behind saying what a fine service I was representing and as he got alongside me he was like ‘hey I know you” – we attended the Coast Guard Academy together and regularly post on the Coast Guard Triathlete Facebook page. Cool to randomly bump into someone I knew during the race. After the out and back it was pretty uneventful, thankfully the final climb on the out and back helped spread people out and it wasn’t nearly as congested for the rest of the race. After drinking the two bottles of my custom Infinit Nutrition long course formula I started grabbing water at the water stops to re-wet my arm cooler wrap and then refill my aero bottle. I also had some PowerBar Wafer bar pieces every 15-
30min based on how I was feeling and had a couple salt tabs in addition to the electrolytes that were already included in my Infinit. Heading through LaGrange was cool as it was a slight downhill through the small town and lined with families and friends, my family was there and I recognized my Dad’s real cowbell right away out of the crowds and flashed them a thumbs up.
I finished the 1st loop of the course and went on to my 2nd. I was finding it somewhat hard to gage my power numbers with the hills as it was hard to get into a rhythm and I’d get my power numbers up only to hit a downhill and they’d dip down again. Special needs were quite a bit after halfway (~67 miles) and in a school parking lot so you had to pull completely off of the road around the parking lot and then they would grab your bag and bring it to you. It took them around 30 seconds to find my bag (which felt like a long time) and the volunteer that was helping me was awesome. He ripped the bag open as soon as he got it and asked what I needed and started handing me stuff. Then I started refilling my aero bottle and he said I’ve got that you relax and do whatever else you need to do while I fill your bottle (awesome!) so I reapplied my chamois crème, replaced my nutrition bag for my bento and headed off. I had tried to pee a few times on the bike but had trouble, I really had to go (my kidney’s were starting to ache) and finally was able to find a short downhill stretch where it wasn’t too crowded to go, I ended peeing twice on the bike course. Once back on Route 42 there were quite a few backups with cars on the road (at least three that I can recall). The road was still open to vehicle traffic so with cars going both direction and 2700+ cyclists on the road many of us were getting stuck behind cars that were hugging the shoulder and we couldn’t pass. Unfortunately most of the times I got stuck behind a car were on a climb (nothing worse than having to slow down or brake on a climb). Finally with around 10 miles to go we made the turn onto River Drive and into a head wind. It wasn’t too bad but combined with some fatigue it felt worse than it really was but I pushed on and passed two girls ahead of me. I finished the bike in 5:41:30 and had caught a lot of people putting me 6th in my Age Group, 31st Female, and 283rd Overall.
After dismounting my bike and handing it off to the volunteers I stopped quickly and took off my bike shoes since it was a long run to the changing tent, I grabbed my Run Gear bag and headed into the Women’s Changing Tent, as I entered a volunteer took my bag and I found an empty chair – the tent was almost completely empty with maybe 1 or 2 other girls. My awesome volunteer held me shorts for me to put on and then helped me with my socks, I slipped on my shoes, then grabbed my visor and race belt and was off with a typical T2 time of 0:04:27, which was right on what I had expected it to be.
Heading out on the run I tried to immediately settle into my planned 8:40/mi pace and not get too excited and to out to fast. I quickly settled in a felt great, nothing hurt and I felt fresh and strong. I kept up with my nutrition that I had preloaded into my running shorts in two 7oz flasks of Infinit Napalm. I planned for a swig (1-2oz) every three miles with water. I did notice early on that my heart rate dropped down to below 140bpm, certainly not typical for me, I felt good so I thought either my sensor is dying on me or my heart is getting tired. The run is an out and back loop that we do twice with a very brief turn in and out of Churchill Downs halfway back. Shortly after the turn around I saw my friend Kelly and we ran together for a few miles. I felt great and started running a 8:30/mi pace without even noticing it. After around 3 miles Kelly and I parted ways and I pushed on. There’s an area through the no so nice part of town that smelled like sewer and I chatted to the woman next to me about the smell, we looked over at each other and it was Sarah, Kelly’s friend from New Hampshire that I’d met on an epic bike ride in driving rain and freezing temperatures on the Blue Ridge Parkway earlier in the year. I told her that Kelly wasn’t too far back. I saw Dai and he said I was 4th in my age group (yah!).
A short time later I ran past the finish line and began my second loop. This is when I started slowing down to over a 9:00/mi pace, I also had to pee really bad so I stopped at the next open porta-potty and made a quick 30-40 second pee stop. I was hoping that the pee stop would help and I’d be able to pick my pace back up but my body wasn’t listening. I continued on the far turn around and saw Katie briefly who was on her first lap and I saw Kelly as well. At this point I started talking to myself just telling myself to pick it up just a little bit and mile by mile I started picking it up slowly and I counted down 5K to go… 2 miles to go… then I started talking out loud to myself. “You can do this… pick it up girl… you can do anything for 2 miles…” Then with one mile to go I just gave it everything I had and willed myself to pick up the pace with my last mile at 8:15/mi pace. I was focused on that finishline, so much so I didn’t even hear them announce my name or talk about how my Coeur Sports tri kit looked like a flag and thanking me for my service. As I crossed the finish line I raised my arms and let out a yell…. then immediately stopped my Garmin (gotta have my data!) I finished the run in 3:52:06.
My mom was volunteering as a finishline catcher and put my medal around my neck after crossing the line – very cool and relieved to have my mom meet me at the finishline. I felt great, 
looked down to see my time on my Garmin and saw I had finished under 11 hours with an official time of 10:57:32! I couldn’t believe it, I mean that was my time goal but I don’t think that I realistically thought I would make it. I couldn’t hold in the emotion and had a good ugly cry while walking down the line of volunteers until I got to the guy that would take my finish photo with my medal… I told him to hold on I needed to compose myself and finish my ugly cry. He said I looked great and couldn’t even tell with my sunglasses on. I got my photo taken and then my mom helped me into a thermal blanket and a chair. My sister, Dad, and Eric 
caught up with me and gave hugs. Then a familiar lady got wheeled over next to me in a wheel chair – it was Sarah and just a couple minutes later Kelly came through so of course we had to get a photo together (I think we look fantastic for just finishing an Ironman).
Then my mom and sister continued volunteering at the finish line for the rest of the night and Eric helped me to the Convention Center. I got my free 10min massage, my massage girl was awesome, super nice (all of the volunteers were). Then I got some chicken broth and some grapes and then walked the 0.6 miles back to our place. After a quick shower and a long Epsom salt bath, I put on my Normatec boots and looked up my official results: Final finish time 10:57:32 with 5th in my Age Group, 26th Female, and 203rd Overall. After some leftover pizza we made our way back to the finish line to watch the final 30min before the midnight cutoff and caught up with Dai, Denise, and Katie. It’s always inspiring to watch the final finishers and relating to the emotion on their face helps the enormity of our accomplishments set it… anyone that finishes an Ironman is amazing and should be proud regardless of their finish time. After the final official finishers and a few stragglers afterwards my family and I grabbed a late dinner at Gordon Biersch making it back to the apartment at around 2am.
I got up early to get in line for my finishers jacket at 6:30am, got my jacket, at breakfast, then came back for the awards ceremony and Kona slot allocation. At Ironman 1st through 5th in the age groups podium so I got a cool 5th place award – very cool souvenir.
Turns out the girl that got 4th is from Virginia as well and has done a few of the same races as me. We hung around for the Kona slot allocation and there were only 3 in my age group 
and no roll-downs so no Kona slot this time but I’m ready for another shot at Ironman Lake Placid 2016. Louisville was a good course, great volunteers, and an enjoyable race but it’s hard to compete with the beauty and history of Ironman Lake Placid. I’ve got a lot of work to put in over the next 9 months in preparation for Ironman Lake Placid but I’m ready for the challenge and looking forward to a great 2016!
The Patriot’s Half participants started the swim at 7am and the Int’l race didn’t start until 7:30am so I hung out with my friends and family for a bit before we headed down.
that people had been telling her that she was in 2nd place so looked like we were going to finish 2nd/3rd female overall. Katie said she was starting to hurt and I ended up passing her at around 2mi to go, she also had another race the next day down in the Outer Banks that she did very well at. I finished with a strong kick into the finish not knowing if there were any other women within sight trying to track me down.
Turns out I finished 3rd Female overall so I was very happy – my first overall podium! Not sure where the #2 girl came from as I don’t remember getting passed on the run and based on her times she would have had to pass me on the run and her finish time was only ~30 seconds faster than me so I assume she started in a later wave for some reason.
was her 4th tri and first with a 750m swim in a river no less. As I mentioned the water was a bit rough when I did the swim on Saturday, so after my race I had her do a short swim to the first buoy and back so she’d get the feel of swimming in a river before her race the next day… it was a bit of a rough swim and she was very anxious about her ability to do the swim the next day.
I am very proud of my mom – my first coaching client – very happy to see her progress throughout the year and I suspect she’s officially caught the tri bug as well 🙂
southwest Virginia with 10,000ft of climbing and ends in a tough, four-mile 12-16% graded climb to the finish. Last year I had no idea what I was getting myself into and ended up walking twice – there’s a 1mi climb at around mile 60 that I walked half of and I walked a small portion of the final climb finishing in 7hrs and 2min. It was and remains the hardest endurance/sport event I’ve ever done… I called my husband and said I would never do it again. Well if you know me, then that means I’ll likely change my mind in a few days, as like most endurance athletes I love a challenge and I wanted to come back to beat the course – no walking and finishing in under 7 hours.
p near Richmond, VA invited me to go along with her and two of her tri friends, Sarah and Ashley, visiting from Northern New England. We met at the Devil’s Backbone Brewery and though the weather was a bit chilly, in the 50s with a slight drizzle, the weather was predicted to clear up until that evening. We did a lot of climbing and chatting between on the flats and stopped at a country store at the top of a long climb to refuel, warm-up, and take a bathroom break.
em all of their cold weather clothes – jackets, pants, socks, heated car, and food/water. When we got back to the top of the gap we needed their help to load up our bikes as we still had not regained dexterity in our fingers. After we got all loaded up we offered to buy them lunch at the Brewery to account for their kindness in rescuing four bad ass damsels in distress. It was the best hot chocolate and meal I’d had in a while!
arrangements my husband inadvertently (or at least I hope so) locked me in the vehicle, with temps in the 90s it was getting warm, I couldn’t roll down windows, unlock or open the doors. Jeff documented the incident and said he was standing by to break with window if needed – we communicated via text and hand signals during the incident… luckily my husband came back just in time. Time to do some extra hydrating to recover from the incident while we go through our race goody bags. Nice short sleeved gender specific technical t-shirts, wireless Bluetooth speakers, and some of the typical samples – very happy with the swag! We did our typical pre-race pizza dinner with root beer – saw another friend who was doing the race at the pizza joint. Then we headed back to the room to finish up final preps and get some shut eye. I had brought two different Coeur Sports triathlon kits with me (Fleet Foxes & Checkmate Designs) and with the input of my husband decided to go with the Fleet Foxes since the red/white/black kit matches my Felt B12 and LG aero helmet colors – look good, feel good right?
se flies (who find me quite delectable) followed by a one mile slight uphill run back on an asphalt running path in the hot sun with no shade…. and repeat 3 more times. With a “feels like” temperature of ~104F there was a lot of suffering out there and my right arm sunburn was starting to feel like it was being roasted in an oven. I kept up with my nutrition plan with a GU gel around 4mi and another around 8mi with some salt stick tabs in between… I had no issues with nutrition – I just couldn’t cool down and honestly I just gave up on pushing myself. 
Another girl in my age group caught up to me a mile in and so I decided that I was going to suffer through the need to pee, however at around 1.5 miles I decided I was probably carrying a few extra liquid pounds and it was only going to get worse as time went on so I begrudgingly found the next porta potty. I don’t think I have peed that long in my entire life… it felt like a minute straight and I’m convinced I was a few pounds lighter afterwards 🙂 The run is a three lap course so after the first lap it’s hard to determine your placing. In the first lap I was told that I was 6th female overall (pre-pee stop). I knew there was a good chance that a few of those girls including the one I was running with earlier were in my age group so I needed to make up some time and catch some ladies.
I tracked down the girl I had been running with earlier and maintained my place as 6th female overall and finished in 1:46:10. Three women over 40 years old that had started in a later swim wave bumped me down to 9th female overall and I ended up with 2nd in my Age Group! Total time was 5:08:01 – a 4min Half PR from the same race last year 🙂
Elisha's Triathlon Exploits 