Louisville Course Info

From Scott P, who went down and did some Louisville recon. He sent this to me a couple of weeks ago and I forgot to post! But, here ya go. Thanks Scott, for allowing me to publish this!

Hello, fellow Louisvillers-

I took a few days and went down to Louisville last weekend. I thought I'd write a bit about my impressions of the courses and whatnot, so I could remind myself later and so you guys can hear about what we found.

Hotels: The Galt House and the Mariott are both in great locations and look like nice joints. I'm staying in a new extended stay hotel right across the river. I'll have to drive to the TA on race morning, but saved about $100 each night. If you can swing it, staying downtown is the way to go because traffic in downtown was a touch screwy and will be worse before and during the race.

Bike shops: Only saw one downtown: The Bike Courier. If you need your fixie chain tightened, or a new messenger bag or radio, this is your place. Do not, under any circumstances, let them build your tri bike. I don't know of other shops.

The River: The river is very warm. There are online rumblings about if this will be a wetsuit swim-- my fingertip thermometer says there is no way we will be under 74 degrees or whatever, but there is no official info. Personally, I'm going to be doing some open water swims without mine. The current looks very mild, and they say they'll use locks to pretty much shut it down on race day. We'll see. I'm totally freaked about the current, frankly.

The Bike Course: I should mention that we had some serious and un-fixable mechanical issues. The lock ring on my cassette came loose, which, of course, needs the special lock-ring tool. There are no bike shops or anything that would resemble retail bike support on the route, so we had to stop a lot as it kept coming loose. Lauren got a flat. All these stops probably affected my outlook on the course. Also, if you're going down to ride the course yourself, it is basically on county highways so there is a scary amount of traffic.

Overall, I really enjoyed the course. It is quite hilly, with just under 7000 feet of total elevation gain on the whole thing. Grades tended to be in the 4-6% range-- like a highway onramp or a good bridge. The hills are rarely steep or long, but it's not a rhythm course. I found that I could stay in a good groove by staying focused on cadence and HR through the rollers and shifting a lot. I stood up for a couple of hills, but mostly because my butt was sore, not because I had to crank. The long descents are not broken by turns or stops, which means you can really let 'er rip (there is one notable exception-- the turn from Ballard Rd. to Old Sligo Rd.). There is a ton of time waiting to be made up on the downhills of this course.

The official profile looks smoother than the course really is-- you're pretty much always going a little up or down, but overall it's not as bad as I thought. The last 30 miles appears downhill, but it's so full of rollers that it was hard to tell, unfortunately. There is one huge descent back to the river, and then it's totally flat (and shady!!) for the last 10 or so-- that will be nice. Road surfaces were good to excellent, with some chip-seal that will be sticky as it heats up.

The heat, humidity, and sun are relentless and took a lot out of me. It was 90 when we rode, and will probably be a touch warmer for the race. Much of the course is shady, but the long stretch back southwest down rte. 42 is totally unshaded and it's going to be tough for a while. Once I got caught up on hydration, I felt much better. I used every gear in my 11-23 cassette, and will probably go to a 12-25 for the race. Hot, sultry, steamy, hot, wet, humid, oven, very hot-- these are words I would use to describe our ride.

The Run Course: The run is basically a two-loop out and back. It's just about pancake flat, with one underpass and a slight hill at the turnaround, which actually felt pretty good after so much flat. The course is really nice-- lots of trees and shade, big old houses, nice people that weren't yet tired of the stream of ironman practicers flowing by their houses. The turnaround near the finish will be tough for me, since you basically run down the finishing chute before peeling off to the right for another 12 miles. I dunno, maybe it will be motivating. The finish area is really cool-- Louisville has covered an entire city block with a glass roof, and there are tons of bars and restaurants right there-- lots of great spectating and some serious speakers for booming out our names as we finish. The Galt House and Marriott are both within a block of the finish.

Whew! that was a lot longer than I meant it to be. Oh well, I hope you got some good info. Overall, the most important factor in this race is almost certain to be the heat, I think.