IRONMAN LOUISVILLE 2020 TRAINING

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WEEK 16 – June 29 > July 5, 2020

IRONMAN TRAINING IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC – PART XVI

Well, it’s over. I finally got the email that I had been expecting for a few weeks now.

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Of course, the main reason the race has been canceled is due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But add in a lot of social unrest going on in Louisville right now, I think that trying to host this race during all of this is a huge headache for the City of Louisville and Ironman.

Actually, I am a little relieved, to be honest. Had Ironman dragged on the decision to cancel to a later date, I probably would have been a little ticked off. I’ve trained for 16 weeks of 30 and had I done more training only to have the race be canceled would not have made me happy. Here are the options Ironman gave me:

Transfer to Ironman Maryland (Cambridge) 2020 on September 19, 2020
Transfer to Ironman Chattanooga 2020 on September 27, 2020
Transfer to Ironman Texas (Waco) 2020 on October 17, 2020
Transfer to Ironman Chattanooga 2021 on September 26, 2021

The option to transfer to Ironman Louisville 2021 doesn’t exist, as Louisville was given a 1-year extension on their previously expired contract. It appears the City of Louisville has moved on from Ironman.

Three of the four options for transferring my registration are for races in the Fall of 2020. Does it make any sense to think that if the October 2020 race has been canceled, that there will be any fall races in 2020? I seriously doubt it. I guess it may depend on the location and how they are dealing with the pandemic, but there has yet to be an Ironman or any other major race held in 2020 that occurred in the United States after the pandemic stay-at-home order.

Cambridge, Maryland is in Dorchester County, MD, and there have been a total of 201 cases of Covid-19 and only five deaths. I guess that is promising. I was expecting it to be somewhat higher. Waco, Texas has had 1563 total confirmed cases with nine deaths. And Chattanooga, Tennessee checks in with 2909 total cases and 35 deaths. Chattanooga’s cases are on the rise, though.

The fourth is the safest bet, a fall race in Chattanooga in 2021. But we all had just done Chattanooga and we weren’t thinking about heading back there any time soon. It’s going to be a tough decision.

I’m not sure what the rest of my Gunner teammates want to do. Jan and I were already signed up to do IMLou, but Dave and Alex were not. I’m thinking Jeff was also signed up but I’m not sure. So at least Jan and I have to make a decision on the above options. The trouble for Dave, Alex, and possibly Jeff is that if you click on the Maryland website it shows it as closed. So if Jan and I opt for that, we won’t be joined by the others. Ironman Texas and Chattanooga are both open for registration, so those are the two options for this year that all the Gunners could be in on. If I were a non-registered Gunner, I’d probably opt out of racing at all. I have been hearing a lot of that on Facebook recently – people are sad that they can’t race, but in reality not racing is probably the smartest and safest thing to do.

The one last option that I may pitch to my buddies is to head up north to my lake home and do Ironman Minocqua – Team Gunners! It would be a self-supported team “race” that we could do on our own, which would have its own set of issues. But it might be a fun team thing to do.

I’m not sure what option I will choose. I’ve got some thinking to do.

TOTALS FOR WEEK 16:

As for Week 16, I did have a pretty good week training up north in Minocqua. I got in an open water swim in Lake Minocqua that Garmin tells me was 2178 yards, which is 70.3 swim distance territory. I felt pretty good doing it too. The other notable thing was that I discovered a paved bike trail system that can take me from Minocqua east to St. Germain and then north to Boulder Junction and then even further west to Manitowish Waters and Mercer. I’m not sure if all that is paved, but what I rode for four hours on Saturday was. It’s a little technical, with a lot of twisting and tight turns and a lot of rolling hills. I will definitely be exploring that trail some more.

Swim: 1 / 1500 yards
Bike: 3 rides / 83 miles
Run: 3 runs / 21 miles

I’ll post again in the next week or two about what I decide to do. I have until July 16 to decide.

Lastly, I’m very glad that I had the opportunity to race Ironman Louisville in 2017. We had a pretty good time then, and I set my personal best Ironman time there.