Ironman USA Lake Placid - TriathlonFull Ironman

So the gun goes off and mass chaos begins.......

Got kicked in the nose by wetsuit man #1 in front of me, got massacred by wetsuit man #2 directly behind me and then he got his arm on top of my shoulder and pulled me back and down--somehow stayed above the water, got side swiped by wetsuit man #3, 11, 18, 67....72..102,etc ;)--"WE MUST CONVERGE ON THE GOLDEN LINE RIGHT NOW!!!" Haha. All in all I guess it was to be expected. There were very few pink caps around me, I seemed to be in a relative mass of wetsuit men in green caps! Once the crazyness dissipated a bit I could somewhat get into a rhythm. The first loop went fairly well and it was way easier to run out of the water for the turn around without my wetsuit on. The second loop was much easier than the first. Got out of the water and looked at my watch...1:05? What the..?...slow...I guess I was taking it a bit easy since I knew I had 180km to bike and 42.2km to run...but still? Haha. I was at least expecting sub-60min...Go figure? Haha. I ran out of the water through the awesome crowd cheering and towards transition!

Swim faster? At the end of the day I was nowhere near an AG award placing so in retrospect it would have been wayyyyy faster to wear my wetsuit...probably could have avoided some of the scuffles with wetsuit man 1, 2, 3, 5, 89, 102...because I probably could have been ahead of them! ;) Oh well...

I felt it was a pretty fast transition considering we had to run to transition from the lake, grab our bag and then go to the tent. I didn't really need to change into anything. A nice volunteer helped me get my belt, glasses, helmet, shoes and sunscreen on. Put a banana into my back pocket and I was off!

Ya...I got passed...a lot..

Started the bike off alright, hit the hills by the ski jumps and noticed a really annoying squeaking noise...ugh oh?...Got off and realised my front brake was rubbing on my wheel. Tried to straighten it up...got back on the bike...was okay for about 200m and then it started to rub again going up one of the hills before the Keene descent started...ACK!...got off again and fiddled with it..the wheel kept on catching (I have no idea what was going on...) Enter into EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN #1. I was kind of starting to freak out...I was only about 10km into the bike and apparently my bike decided to have issues! People going up the hill kept asking if I needed help or had all the tools to fix whatever issue I had...I said I was okay and had the tools, but but didn't really know what the issue was ...it was pretty choked back and I was kind of starting to cry. Eventually I calmed myself down and just ended up opening my front brake enough that it would still catch if I needed it but wasn't rubbing. I waited for a few minutes to see if bike support would drive by..it didn't and I was getting kind of antsy so I got back on my bike and continued on. One I hit the Keene descent I was feeling a bit better about everything but noticed I was having a really hard time staying down in aero. My traps were just locked up and I couldn't get comfortable at all. I rode the majority of the bike course up on my handlebars on the aero pads or on the horns because of this tightness and pain...I tried stretching, changing my position..nothing worked. I only felt better once I got off the bike onto the run...really weird since I am pretty tapped into my aero position usually? Don't have an explanation for the brake thing or aero thing?

Finished the first lap in fairly good spirits. The first lap was mainly men passing me (apparently a down side to coming out of the water near the front is watching A LOT of people pass you on the bike if you are not equally as good on the bike? haha) Two guys passed me on the hill leaving Jay (Stephen and Armand...I think?) and were cheering me on because I was able to stay with them going up the hill. I got to high five the PMUs green Tour hand...I felt that I was pretty cool at that point, hit Wilmington, out and back and then headed towards Lake Placid and THE BEARS!!....On the first lap they really wern't that bad...but that could have been because there were like 5000 people chilling out on top of Papa Bear as we came through. FREAKING AWESOME! :) I came down Lake Placid Club drive feeling pretty content and happy with myself...passed all the crowds and then headed back out onto lap 2....

EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN #2: I don't even understand the reason for this one...nothing really "wrong" happened. I was kind of tired from the first lap...it was pretty deserted...I had a few choked back tears and then decided on eating my banana and just sitting back and watching the course. It is pretty phenomenal to actually watch while you are riding. I needed something else to focus on other than the fact that I had 90km to go and was already tired....I eventually settled on playing back that Versus commercial from 2010 in my head...you know the one where the coach is talking as the movie plays and they is all this "you vs. no, you vs. can't, you vs. won't, you vs. them" talk...so I just kept saying "you vs. no, you vs. can't, you vs. won't"....over and over...

Then the Keene descent happened again...AND IT IS FRIGGIN FANTASTIC...(I forgot to mention how fun the Keene descent was on lap 1...IT WAS REALLY FUN!)...I remember thinking to myself "Man...I just need to do descending races...haha" Bombing down that hill is wickeddddd! So by the time I hit Keene again I was pretty excited and ready to ride the rest of the loop. Hit the Jay out and back and then started that damn climb up to Wilmington (I must say I have decided that that climb to Wilmington is harder than the 3 Bears...Just my opinion...)...I gave a less enthusiastic high five to the PMUs green Tour hand and continued on...and on...and on..up those damn hills! Haha. The last 12miles into LP felt like they were taking forever. I was really starting to feel the burn...the Bears FINALLY came and I started thinking to myself "how am I going to run now?" So then I had another "you vs. no, you vs. can't" montage with myself and just settled on a "take it as it comes" strategy.

Rode through the crowd again and that picked up my energy quite a bit and then I entered into transition!

I was a bit slower than I wanted to be...I was originally gunning for <7hrs...but then that mechanical and second loop happened...My average speed was quite a bit slower on the second lap compared to the first. What would have been optimal would have been to ride that course beforehand, but living on the west coast all summer that just wasn't logistically possible. I should have bucked up in June too and gotten a few more long rides in...but life got in the way with my physiatry elective and traveling back and forth from Edmonton to Vancouver--not to mention that pesky BF in Iowa who took up 2 weekends in June! ;) Haha.

Faster transition than T1! It was kind of cool to come into T2 and not need to deal with racking my own bike! Yay for volunteers! :) I could feel the burn on my back from the ride and thankfully I was thinking ahead and had packed a white dry fit shirt in my run bag. Changed shirts and got my volunteer to help me put on sunscreen. Changed into my running shoes, grabbed my cap and put on my running belt and hit the road for 26.2 miles...I was so happy to get off the bike...my traps and wrists were just screaming by the end of 180km on the bike and standing upright totally took the pressure off.

Nothing really...transitions were goooooooooood! :)

HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT....ya I know to all you easterners that 24C doesn't qualify as hot, but I was dying! Haha. Note to self: go train somewhere hot before completely changing climates! I initially started to jog right out of T2. I grabbed a sponge right away and whipped off my hat...not remembering that my sunglasses were on the brim...so some of the spectators were yelling at me that I dropped them so I did a quick turn around to pick them up and waved at everyone before continuing on my way. I hit the first aid station still running and then walked up the first little hill. By the time I hit the big hill to go to the out and back at River Rd I was horribly nauseous from the heat and needed to walk. Once I got down the big hill I decided to start a 5min run:1min walk pacing strategy. It worked for a few intervals, but whenever I was in the direct sun I had quite a bit of nausea hit and needed to walk to let it pass. Luckily most of the out and back was relatively well shaded due to the trees so I was able to keep up my 5:1.

The volunteers at the aid stations were awesome and really encouraging throughout which helped tons in keeping going. There was a really cool group of spectators around the horse show grounds with pump up music going on through the time I was out there. Coming back into LP they were playing some Boom Boom Boom by Black Eyed Peas and that helped me get back into the area where the large crowds were. I spotted my Mom when I was walking up the hill in LP towards the town centre. She told me that I was doing good and to keep on moving. I started to run once I saw here till I got to the run special needs. I grabbed some Vaseline to rub on my arms because my shirt was chafing a bit because it was wet from me squeezing out the sponge water. I was trying to screw my cap back on and I was having a little bit of difficulty coordinating the alignment of the cap with the screw top action. The volunteer who was helping me out noticed my distress and told me "let me do that! You have some business to finish here! Get outta here!" haha. So thanks to that volunteer for screwing my Vaseline cap back on! :) I made it to the second turn around and headed back out. The crowds were great! Then I headed out on my second loop...

I hit the first aid station and walked to the top of the little hill again and started to run...but then I got this horrendous whiff of something...a group of spectators were BBQing some shish ka-bob on one of those little portable BBQs...OMG it just turned my stomach! Haha. Normally I like shish ka-bob...but at mile 14 of the run of an ironman? Nooooooo. Haha. So I ended up walking to just about the horse show grounds. A lady on the side lines walked with me for a couple hundred meters and asked how I was doing and gave me some words of encouragement. I had another replay of my "you vs. no" montage around this time too! Haha. :) I hit the music playing spectators again around the horse show grounds and they were still rocking some tunes so I got moving again. Thankfully by this point it was starting to cool off a bit and I was really able to commit to my 5:1 strategy. Miles 15, 16, 17, 18 came and went fairly well. There was a group of us who seemed to be running more or less together by this point. I got an awesome surprise around mile 18 (I think....by that point everything kind of meshed together...) ONE VOLUNTEER HAD M&Ms!!!! OMG VOLUNTEER WITH M&Ms: I LOVE YOU. :) I was so happy...She had just ran out of cups, so I dumped out my water cup so she could put a few M&Ms in there. I kept running on my happy high with the M&Ms. Around that same time I was fiddling with my run belt for some reason and one of my gels fell out...and I know it is bad...but I honestly didn't have the mental fortitude at the time to turn around to pick it up...however, it was kind of lucky I didn't! A girl behind me asked if I needed an extra gel because she had one. I said "oh no, I'm okay....I honestly can fathom taking another gel right now...I'm just so sick of them!". She laughed and agreed and we started running together and talking each other through the run and talked about it being our first ironman and training, etc. About another mile later another girl joined us and we had quite the little social group going! Yay for making friends on the ironman course...haha. MAKE FRIENDS WHEN DOING YOUR IRONMAN!!! IT HELPS! :) So there we were running back towards the giant hill by the ski jumps and we saw this plane in the trees off into the distance on the ground moving and then it just sort of disappeared...a guy behind us asked if anyone else had seen it! Haha. We all kind of laughed it off. (wouldn't that be weird if we all had the same visual hallucination? Haha. ironman psychosis? Anyone?) We walked back up the giant hill by the horse grounds again all kind of groaning about having to go around the second turn around again. We hit the hill in LP and the excitement of the crowd really got me going, the other girls were having a hard time and told me just to go ahead. So I started up the hill...there was a guy with a microphone who was trying to get people to run up the hill who was calling out "ya 71, run up this hill 71!" and another guy on the other side of me who was yelling "you are so fast, soooooo fast"...it's kind of funny to think about now since there is no way I was going "soooooo fast" at that point, but I appreciate the sentiment! Haha. I was really getting excited and people were telling me "you're going to do this, you are going to be an IRONMAN!" it was crazy...like 138 miles by that point and I was almost there! I hit the second turn around and heard some more music. The song that was playing was "Edge of Glory" by Lady Gaga. I felt it was very fitting. I guess I kind of was on the Edge of Glory? I only had about 1km to go and I was still running. I can't even describe entering into the Olympic oval. (I'm kind of tearing up on the plane just typing this out!) it was the single best sporting moment I have ever had....I swam competitively for over 10 years and have done tris for almost 4 years now and NOTHING compares to entering that oval with all the people just screaming and cheering and being happy for nothing other than all these people finishing the Ironman! It was like being at the Olympics and winning the gold medal and I came in over 1700th place! Just craziness! I passed under the first arch and was alone coming towards the finish line. I could hear Mike Reilly over the sound system announce my name and say those epic words we all wait to hear "YOU ARE AN IRONMAN"! Just awesome awesomeness!

It would have been great to train running in some heat...but overall, it was my first ironman...I didn't really know how my body was going to react by the end of the day! Haha. It wasn't a fast marathon, but I finished that sucker.

Well I crossed the line and into the arms of an awaiting volunteer. He checked to make sure I was okay...and oddly enough I was. I was super diligent in taking in my electrolytes, glucose and salt tabs (how bad would it look if a med student who does research in salt balance ended up being hyponatremic? I would NEVER hear the end of it from my research supervisor....haha ;) ) I got my finisher picture and space blanket and somehow found my Mom. I guess my warm up would be the hobbling to the car after I had collected all my gear? I was pretty hurting by that point and just wanted to get a shower and get clean clothes on. Mom drove me back to our hotel and made me some soup for dinner. My stomach was not feeling so hot and I wasn't feeling into anything else. About an hour later I was in so much pain...achy, sore, tight, etc. I took some naproxen, wriggled into my magic pants and hit the sack! I AM AN IRONMAN!!


The heat, the 3hr time change, bike mechanical, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. So many factors come into play during a 14hr day, it's impossible to truly predict how the day will progress. I think the reason why I wasn't really super nervous right before the race start was that I kind of just accepted that the day would be about survival rather than "racing". The next IM I will be able to "race" I think. Ironman is the single most grueling experience I have ever put myself through: mentally, emotionally and physically. I think I needed to just survive the day and really understand how to suffer for such a long period of time out there on the course. All in all I am happy with the way I did my first IM. I guess I could have trained a bit more as far as long rides were concerned, I could have not gone to Vancouver for the summer and gone somewhere more like LP to train...but when it is all said an done: I AM AN IRONMAN! :)


Great race!