Ironman Chattanooga : Official Thread (Page 10)

I got a call from the Residence Inn yesterday. I am pretty happy b/c it is 2 bedrooms and a kitchen which will work well for my family. It is also really close to everything downtown so my kids can be entertained during the race.

Fantastic! It is great that your family is going. Chattanooga is a fun family friendly town with lots to do.

I will be doing this race solo. In Louisville, you had to have someone take your tire pump if you brought it with you to the transition are on race morning.....sine I will have no one to hand the pump off to, I would like to borrow someone's tire pump on race morning. But I guess it's waaay too early to start arranging logistic support. :-)

Participant list is finally up on the Ironman site. Makes if sink in a little more to see the name on the list. Hope everyone's training is going good!

I've done a few of these (including Louisville) and only brought a pump once (New Zealand) and keeping up with that was tough. I now rely on either borrowing from someone nearby and that was never a problem or in the case where I found a flat (New York or rather New Jersey) in the morning setup I went to the bike tent. I do carry a small pump (bike clip type) just in case but have never had to use it in transition.

Thats weird to see. It does finalize it a bit. Still have to knock down IMFL next weekend before thinking about it.

I'll be at IMFL also and it looks to be a cold one.

I rode the IMCHOO course today. I did all of the out and back and 1 loop except for the first/last 3 miles or so. there are a lot of stop lights so we didnt mess with that.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/395809798

theres my garmin file for anyone interested. The hills arent bad, but they're relentless. as you can tell from the file, there is NO flat ground. The climbs are mostly just short little steep bursts. If you carry your speed they're not bad. Anyone who doesn't live in coastal flatlands will be fine. Flatlanders need to do some interval work/ hill climbs.


Let me know if yall have any questions, and goodluck to everyone at IMFL in a couple weeks!

did that say 32 degrees?

Thanks for posting that file. 32 degrees is brave indeed. Im hoping to go out and do the loop tomorrow, but will wait until it warms up a bit (but will contend with church traffic for sure).

Anyone riding out there tomorrow?

Yeah....it was freezing. Frost on the ground. The course has a lot of shade, which was terrible yesterday but will be GREAT on race day.

So who's doing which 70.3s in lead up next year? I think my wife and I are going to do Raleigh and then Atomic Man (local in Knoxville, TN) 4 weeks out. It would be cool to get a group of people together for dinner or something if a lot of us are going to be at some of these races..

Good news. I was on the waiting list but no call. I already have a room at the Hampton Inn so I'll be OK but I am a Marriott fan and most of my travel points are with Marriott. The location of the Residence Inn can't be beat.

I did the bike portion of a relay at the Austin 70.3 yesterday. Note to self, get hill training before Chattanooga. Didn't really train hard coming into this as 9 of us came mainly for a long weekend in Austin, just happened to be a race There wasn't 1 mile of flat road! Having a rental bike didn't help as the fitting is just not there. OK for the first 40 miles but my legs were dying after that. Unfortunately I need to dice 2 - 3 hours to get any kind of hill training in.

enjoy

Did you ride it on a tri bike or rodie? Curious if id be better on a road bike with clip-ons, I descend much better on a road bike and climb much better also.
If theres no long sections of flat than I cant see any benefit *I* would get from using my tri bike.

Thanks for the garmin info, it was very interesting. No matter how I loo at it, 112 miles is just a long ride. Were you able to maintain aero position throughout?

So - my plan is to drive the RV up, anybody got intel on a nearby site to set up?

There is something to be said for being in walking distance - I just got back from B2B in North Carolina - friends had rented a house by the beach - it was about a 10 min ride to T1 (we rode our bikes there on Fri to drop them off), and like a 5 min walk to the IM swim start...so while everyone was outside freezing various body parts off (it was about 38 degrees in the am) - we were nice and warm in the house

Its definitely a tri bike course, not a roadie course. none of the hills are truly sustained, just punches. the longest hill is probably only 2-3minutes and there are only a couple of those. the rest are just bumps in the road that you need to push over. I only went out of big ring twice on the whole ride. If you have a tri bike: ride it. I'd even ride a disc if I had it. It really isnt a hard course, just small, relentless hills.

As for aero, I guess it depends on the person. I definitely get sick of aero position, so pretty much sit on the bullhorns at all times when I'm climbing and then switch to aero on descents/flats. there is plenty of aero time. there are a few sections where you can cruise like 25+mph without much effort (net descent with some rollers) and you'll be glad you're on a tri bike in aero for that.

No Problem! If anyone is going to make it down to the course between now and the race let me know and i'll play guide. it's about 2 hours from my house and I plan on riding it as much as I can in the next 11 months.

My brother in law and I are planning on driving in from Kansas City in the May time frame as well to ride the course. Would love to meet up with anyone else. Might try and shoot for that same weekend in May others previously mentioned.

I'm registered for Raleigh.

I'm interested in how this looks. I almost have a reservation at the doubletree ... Somehow I'm waitlisted for one night. But I'm looking at other options. My kids are fascinated by RVs so this might be a fun thing to explore.

Me too.