Ironman Louisville 2019

As I was on the first loop of the bike course, and making my way up a steep hill on Ballardsville School Road, a triathlete suddenly cut in front of me.  He was trying to get out of the way of the elites who were on their second loop of the IMLOU course and they were coming up upon us fast.  If the triathlete would have moved to the right quickly then there would have been no problem; but, because we were climbing up a steep hill, he moved in slow motion.  As all of this unfolded in front of me, I knew that i had to make a decision; I could go off into the ditch off to my right, I could swerve off to the left and get in the way of the elites, or i could go straight and plow into the guy who had cut me off.  I chose the latter course.  I hit the triathlete who had cut me off in the back of his wheel and, as I tried to unclimbed my my foot from the pedal, I found that I could not escape in time.  Down goes Frazier!  In slow motion, I fell off of my bike and, upon landing on the hard concrete, I hurt my back, neck elbow, and ribs.  This was not a heroic fall and i didn't want o admit that I had been hurt by such a meaningless wreck.  I got up, dusted myself off, and got back on the bike as if nothing unusual had happened.  But then, on the second loop of the bike, I began experiencing back and neck pain.  I had difficulty rating my head because my neck was causing me problems and I couldn't bend my back without pain because my lumbar had tightened up.  There was an ambulance at the intersection of Highway 153 and L'Spirit and I decided to stop and have the EMT check me out.  My hope was that after a brief respite, I could get back on the bike and pretend that the collision had never occurred.  After laying down for awhile, I tried to get up and experienced a shooting pain going up the middle of my back.  I decided to call it a day.  What an anticlimactic way to end a race and my career as a triathlete.
So many thing went wrong this year and nothing went right.  First of all, the race directors changed the run course so that we wouldn't run down Southern Parkway but instead did three loops around River Road.  It was too costly to pay the officers to guard every intersection between. Hi the river and Iroquois Park, and the locals didn't like having a major parkway shut down for the day, so the race director invented a new course that went by the county dump.  For me, the best part of Ironman Louisville was running through downtown, but now the marathon was nothing to get excited about.
The second thing that went wrong was that there was algae in the Ohio River so they had to cancel the swim.  I understand all of the health implications but the long and short of it is that without the swim we were not doing a full Ironman.  Besides, my advantage in IMLOU is that I am a really good swimmer so I entered the water with the elites at 7:30.  This year they started the bike at 8:30 and, because the race director went by numerical order, I didn't start the bike until 10:00.  I lost a full hour of buffer time and I began the race at the back of the pack.  Finally, I had to reconcile myself with the fact that I would have to do most of the bike, especially the second loop, by myself.  Still, it was doable.  I could do the bike in eight hours and then do the marathon in six hours and be done before midnight.  It was doable.
The third thing that went wrong was the temperature.  The local morning news reported that it was 39 degrees before dawned.  My thought was that it was just as well that the swim was cancelled as I didn't want to sit on the concrete and wait to get into the river when it was so cold.  The high temperature for the day was 70 degrees and how on earth do you prepare for a thirty degree temperature range aside from putting on a lot of layers.  Also, my allergies were acting up and my nose was running, sometimes with a bloody nose, for the whole time on the bike.  My anxieties were working over time between the temperature, new run course, algae in the water, and a new start time.  It was all a little too much for me.
The final thing that went wrong for me was my personal health.  I had been experiencing diarrhea, headaches, and nausea before the race.  Dread, and the depression that it causes, had been following me around for days.  I wasn't excited about the race because of the new run course and the fact that the swim had been cancelled.  I don't like change.  Still, the race was doable and I couldn't have prepared any better.  I may be old and slow but I trusted my training and had confidence in my planning for IMLOU 2019.  If I had to look myself in the mirror, and I mean honestly look at all of the training that I had done, I truly felt that I couldn't have prepared myself and better for the race.
And then it was over.  The EMT with the ambulance at 153 and L'Spirit said that I had incurred no spinal damage and that it was a soft tissue problem.  The SAG van took me back to medical where I asked for some muscle relaxers to help me with the pain.  The doctor said that he couldn't offer me any drugs or even an IV.  He suggested that I go to the hospital for some imaging and then wrapped my neck and back to secure an ice back.  As I left medical I thought to myself, "I am never doing this race again.  There is too much pain and disappointment involved with it and I am going to call it a career."  My hope is that I can find a good half-Ironman to compete in because I am done with the full.  Maybe I will try Racine or the Steelhead again.  All I know is that I am done with the full Iroman Louisville Kentucky.