Ironman Louisville 2011 (Run update)

Alright, once again I will start with the important stuff and then go from there. 

That's right.  Although there is an Ironman going on in Louisville right now, and many consider the race impossible....part of a bucket list, or maybe just crazy, somehow this guy and his crazy African Tortoise won the first picture of this blog post.  Nope, I'm not kidding....this guys was literally walking his 8 year old turtle down the street in downtown Louisville.  That's right folks, walking his turtle.  When I saw it I just knew we had to pull over and the get story.  This turtle will live between 80-90 years and is just over 8 years old.  Somehow, this man seemed to think it was totally normal to be walking his turtle on a Sunday afternoon.

Ok, now for the stuff you guys really came here to read about.  We saw Ryan at 3pm, right on schedule.  He came through transition and although he seemed to have a little bike malfunction right as he came into transition he seemed to be in good spirits and rode his bike in.  I'm not sure what happened but I'm sure he will tell us about it in another 4ish hours.  At this rate we expect him to be done around 7:30 which puts him really really close to his personal goal of a sub-12 hour race.  Things seem to be going exactly to schedule and he's doing a great job!!

We've been having a great time with those heads on a stick!!  Here Lindsay and I scored the best seats in the house to watch him come in from the bike.  We were able to see above everyone and give the rest of our cheering section a heads up that he was coming though.

See...pretty happy right??  At least he's doing a good job of pretending for the camera!! 

I just checked my athlete tracker app and it looks like he is around mile 13 (half way done!!).  He's ranking 749 overall and 127 in his age group.  Those numbers fluctuate a little as other racers that may have started after him come through but he is doing a great job and we are super excited that in just a few short hours we will be cheering for him as he crosses the finish line and they announce "Ryan McGrath, you ARE an Ironman!"  Man, I can't wait to hear those words.  I'm sure Ry can't either :O)

Stay tuned for one final post from me with the final race details.