Ironman Bike Course

The weekend ended up being as tough as I had expected. The biggest obstacle ended up being the heat. A cool front was “supposed” to come through our state on Saturday morning providing warm, but not scorching heat like we’ve had the last week up to that point. Unfortunately that cool front never hit Madison until late Saturday evening and this led to some very challenging conditions in my two loop ride of the bike course.

Got to Madison around 6:30am and began my ride at 7am sharp. I was able to link up with 3 guys who were all riding the course for the first time and were also doing their first Ironman’s at Wisconsin this year. We were prepared for the heat and at 7am the temperature was already 75 and fairly humid. One loop of the Ironman course is 42 miles and by the time I had finished the first loop it was in the 90’s leading to an entire second loop featuring temperatures well into the 90s with full sun.

As far as endurance work, over years of experience I have discovered that I struggle more than most people with extreme heat. I am a heavy, salty sweater and I need to drink an exorbitant amount of water to stay hydrated (almost an unreasonable amount). I also need to eat salt tablets like crazy to keep my system in balance. Part of my problem on Sunday during my first loop was that I was socializing a bit too much with my riding partners and not paying enough attention to my hydration, salt intake and nutrition. As any long distance endurance athlete knows, once you fall behind in these disciplines, you pay the price downstream.

Although I finished the full two loops totaling 84+ miles, I struggled for the last 15-20 miles of the second loop. I was dehydrated, nauseous and didn’t feel like eating (which makes things worse). All of that led to a second loop that was about 2 mph slower than loop one. Although it was not a perfect ride for me, it was a great reconnaissance mission of the course and it helped reaffirm how important it is for me to pay attention to food & water - especially during extreme conditions. It is unlikely that it will be 95 in September for Ironman, but the last several years have had some warm temperatures into the 80’s. I learned a lot about myself on Saturday’s ride and I am proud of the way I handled the adverse conditions. I just pray we don’t have similar conditions on September 9th!