I rode my road bike out to watch the cycling leg of the Ironman Louisville Sunday. You tri's are awesome athletes. Kinda freakish actually to be able to put your body through that. And there were some less-than-ideal bodies out there that I have no idea how they were gonna ride 112 miles much less get of and run a marathon.
My observations:
- Amazing amazing athletes
- Pain. Lots of pain.
- Why the aero bar set up and time trial bikes? The cycling course was one I often ride - it's rolling terrain with a few good climbs. It's a road course not a TT course? Aero bars and full disc wheels? It was slightly windy. What advantage on a 112 mile road course with wind do disc wheel give you. And aero bars? With the last 1/3 of the competitors, the second time around the Oldham County loop (around mile 65 I think) no one was in the aero bars or drops - everyone was searching for comfortable hand positions.
- Why the aero TT bikes? It's a road course. It's not a TT course. It's hilly. There are curves. You're usually riding 70%+ of the course in traffic with cars and other riders.
- #1 bike most used seen = Cervelo. Followed by the Roos
- I saw more Motobecanes from BD than Litespeeds. Times they are a changin' (and BTW I just took delivery on a new Litespeed M1)
- Coolest bike seen = steel Serotta Atlanta
- Strangest person seen riding was chick with lots of make up and bright red lipstick. Not as bright at mile 65 as mile 35 lol
- The pink women's Roos were cool looking
- Why don't they close the freakin' roads for an event as big as this? They close the roads for running "races" where main objective of 95% of participants is to get a T-shirt for running 5K. The turn in Buckner that put riders back onto LaGrange Rd was scary as hell. The Oldham County sheiff's tried as best they could but there was a lot of traffic. Almost had several accidents even with them directing traffic. And why did they have a volunteer controlling the southwest bound cars? The guy would gingerly motion cars to aproach but many of them thought he was telling them to proceed through the intersection and then you'd have a car and bikes there at same time and it was scary - why didn't they have another sheriff controlling that way? Why don't they just close the roads - heck this thing generates millions of $$dollars in hotel stays and food and such for the area.
Saddest most disturbing thing (besides the car traffic) was a competitor's family at that intersection setting up to hand the guy a special drink or supplement (milky white) after the turn and talking about how to do it so they didn't get caught, talking about if they got caught he'd be disqualified. I dunno - is that really a rule that you' can't take support from anyone during the race? If you finish and qualify but you cheated did you really finish? Could you look at yourself in the mirror knowing you didn't play by the rules?