IRONMAN LOUISVILLE 2020 TRAINING

WEEK 15 – June 22 > June 28, 2020

IRONMAN TRAINING IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC – PART XV

I’m typing this on my iPad and it’s a little bit of a struggle for this technology challenged old guy, but I promise to clean it up when I get back to my computer at home.  I’m surprised that I am even putting forth the effort seeing that I am on vacation. 

There were a few things happening this week that kind of screwed with my desire to train. The first is that knowing that my family and I were heading to our lake house for a week, I had some stuff to deal with before leaving. I did get most of the weekly stuff done, but I missed the long ride on Saturday due to the drive up north and then dealing with cleaning up the yard and moving a week worth junk in. 

So I opted to do the four-hour ride on Sunday and it went okay, but it was eerily similar to last week’s ride.  Had another tire issue that I just refilled with a CO2 cartridge a couple of times.  This bike is nine years old and I have never had a tire or tube issue with it.  I seem jinxed lately with flats.   The ride also ended with a similar bonk at the end.  It wasn’t really hot, but I was sweating as usual and most likely didn’t keep up with my hydration.  I felt so worn out at the end that I opted to jump in the lake to cool down and skip the 30-minute brick run afterward.

My better half joined me on the ride for awhile on the Bearskin Trail.

Bubba’s

‘Murica!

My ride took me to Nokomis and I found a new place in the middle of nowhere called “Bubba’s”.  It looks like a large place for bikers to assemble for an upcoming event they have for motorcyclists. The USA War monument They built was pretty impressive.

The other issue that has poured a little water on my enthusiasm is that I discovered that Ironman has closed registration for Ironman Louisville. That’s a problem because 3/5’s of my Gunner teammates hadn’t signed up for it yet!  I’m not sure why they closed it, but I have a pretty good idea why.  They maybe trying to limit they amount of triathletes competing to limit the risk to everyone, but that’s not it.  They also may be trying to limit the amount of triathletes that they have to offer transfers to if and when they have to cancel the race due to COVID-19, but that’s not it either.  I’m now about 99% sure this race will get canceled next week.

It was mentioned on the IM Louisville Facebook page that the same thing happened to Ironman Ohio 70.3 – they closed registration and then the following week they postponed/canceled it.

So, now I kind of don’t feel like training. I know that I said last week that if the race survives past Week 15 that I would keep training, but I’m not so sure.  Feeling like the ax is going to fall on this race puts a damper on training for me.  Gunner teammate Dave says he’ll probably still train and look for another late fall race to do, but I’m thinking that there won’t be any racing this year for Ironman in the US.  Seeing that COVID-19 numbers are spiking in some areas again says a lot.

So I plan on training this next week while on vacation and doing what I can waiting for a decision to be made.  I just hope it comes sooner rather than later.

TOTALS FOR WEEK 15:

• Swim:  1 / 1500 yards
• Bike:   3 rides  /   85.5 miles
• Run:   5 runs  /  17.3 miles (skipped the Saturday brick and the Sunday long run this week.)

Author: Ironman Chris

Family, running, triathlon and drumming are my things. View all posts by Ironman Chris