Lake Placid, New York United States Ironman North America 71F / 22C Precipitation

Total Time = 14h 42m 8s Overall Rank = 1767/2340 Age Group = 40-44 Age Group Rank = 325/396

WARNING!!! This is going to be very long. Reader's Digest version: I had a great time, met a lot of cool people, but it's one and done for me.

For me, it all began in 1982 with Julie Moss. Watching her trying to get to the finish line of this race called ironman hooked me. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do that to themselves but I was fascinated watching it, and so the seed was planted. Fast forward about 13 years to 1995 when my identical twin brother tells me about recently completing the Marine Corp Marathon. I thought to myself, “I have the same genes as him, I can do that”. Mind you that I had always been athletic through high school and college (hockey, lacrosse, soccer, football, baseball, etc), but never really ran for any distances. So I bought a couple of books, and 9 months later completed by first marathon in 4:27 all the while swearing over the last few miles that this was the stupidest idea I had ever had and I was never going to do this again. Fast forward again eight more years (and nine marathons later) to 2004; I finally broke 4 hours (oh so close three times 4:01, 4:02, 4:02). This was important because I promised by wife that I would be done with this marathon thing once I broke 4 hours.

A few months later, as we were sitting around the dinner table, I mentioned to my wife I was thinking of trying a triathlon. Mind her, her only exposure to triathlon was watching the coverage of Kona every year. Once I explained to her that there were different distances and there would be NO WAY I would try an ironman since I knew how painful it was to run a marathon, and that I couldn’t imagine running a marathon after riding a bike for 112 miles, she just sort of rolled her eyes (I think she knew all along) and gave her blessing.

Fast forward again to July of 2007, after having completed two half-ironmans (again telling my wife after completing them that I couldn’t imagine doing twice that distance) and numerous sprints and olys, I was starting to get these crazy notions that I could complete an ironman. Sitting around the dinner table a couple of weeks before IMLP 2007 I decided to bring up the topic with my wife. The first words out of her mouth “I KNEW IT!!!”. After some discussion, and much reassurance that this would be a one and done, she again gave her blessing.

I still remember the day I actually registered for the race, hitting that enter button to submit my registration was both the most terrifying and exciting moment of my life outside of the birth of my two kids and my wedding day (neither of which was terrifying, just exciting).

Training officially began on January 21, 2008. I had picked a 6 month plan from “Training Plans for Multisport Athletes” because it seemed very doable and it was somewhat heavy on swim volume compared to the other plans I looked at and the long bike rides maxed out at a couple of hours the first couple of months of the plan when I was going to have to be using the trainer. Some things I’ll remember from the past six months:
1. I probably did 98% of the workouts, and although some weeks were tougher than others, I think the key was just focusing on the next workout and not worrying what was coming up the next day, the next week, the next month. It can get to overwhelming if you do.
2. I thought I did a great job managing my time. The one promise I made to my wife when I started was that I was going to minimize as much as possible the impact that this was going to have to our family. All my weekday training was done before work which usually meant I was up by 4:30, swimming was done during lunch hour (fortunately the pool is 5 min. from the office) and I would always leave one day free on the weekends which meant my long runs had to be done before work.
3. For the most part, I really enjoyed the training, it was quite an experience and I really pushed myself both physically and mentally further than I ever have. I did all but a few workouts alone, and I found I really enjoyed the time to myself. It was a great time to sort through things going on in my life, working through problems at work, and having some weird conversations with yourself.
4. I learned to really enjoy swimming. Swimming was always my limiter, and it probably still is and it was the one sport I was most concerned about when I looked at the training. The longest continuous swims I had done up until 6 months ago was 1.2 miles and I couldn’t imagine swimming twice that distance. Now I can regularly swim 3000+ yards with absolutely minimal effort and the 2.4 miles is easily doable.
5. When things get tough in LP and I need some self-motivation I’ll remember all the mornings I got up before the butt-crack of dawn, all the time I spent on the trainer watching Coach Troy’s butt while watching the LP training DVD, the unending blue line at the bottom of the pool, but mostly I’ll think about my family and the sacrifices they made for me to help me realize my dream.
6. Lastly, but most importantly, all the support from my family, my training partners (Trigirl069 and Hudnick, you guys are the best) and my co-workers (thanks for pushing me out the door every lunch to make me swim, and the extra-long lunch hours to fit those 1 hour swims in)

Race Week:

We got into Lake Placid on Tuesday and we stayed at the Adirondack Inn. The place was fantastic. Even though they require a seven night minimum, the location couldn’t have been better. It’s literally a ½ block from the Olympic Oval, out the back of the Inn is the swim start and the bike leg goes right by the Inn. The room we had came with a microwave and a small refrigerator so we were able to save some money on food and keep drinks cold. They served a continental breakfast every morning (cereal, coffee, juice, fruit, danish), which also kept down the cost of food.

The day before the race, I brought my bike down to transition and covered it with plastic since the forecast was calling for showers that evening and night and I wanted to try to keep it relatively dry. I also double-bagged my bike shorts and tri-top and my running shoes, socks, and shorts to make sure they stayed dry in case it rained. Almost every day since we had been here we had gotten some rain, but it usually last 10-20 min, with a pretty good tropical downpour, but the sun would come right out after (cue ominous music).

The night before the race, I had a great dinner with my wife, kids, and parents at a nice Italian restaurant to top off the carbo stores. Went back to the room and my son and I got his DVD player out and we watched our favorite movie, Miracle (we were after all in Lake Placid where it all happened) to get me pumped up for tomorrow and finally fell asleep around 9:30. I slept relatively good and woke up about 30 min. before my 4:15 alarm (thank god for all those early morning training sessions, because I was pretty wide awake by that time). I went down to breakfast, which the Inn was kind enough to open up at 4:00 for all the racers. I put the Weather Channel on and they were calling for overcast skies, temps in the low 70’s and a 40% chance of afternoon thundershowers. So if the rain came, it was likely going to hit during the run which wouldn’t be bad, overall a pretty favorable forecast (cue more ominous music). Breakfast consisted of a couple of bowls of Wheaties (the breakfast of champions), an english muffin with peanut butter, and a cup of cofffee. Surprisingly, it all went down pretty easily, since my stomach usually is doing flip-flops race morning, but this morning it was pretty calm.

After breakfast, I started down to transition around 5:00, dropped off my special needs bags, got body marked, went into transition and packed a few more things into my transition bags, took the plastic off the bike (never rained overnight) and got the tires pumped up. After I was set to go, I headed back to the room to see my wife and kids one last time, then headed down to the swim start. Gave everyone a hug and a kiss good bye, lots of well wishes and as I was headed out the door my son called me over and said in my ear “Dad, This is your time”. He got this from the movie we watched last night, and it’s what the coach told the USA hockey team just as they were about to go out and play the Russians. As I was walking down to the water, I thought about that a lot, and he was right, this was going to be my time.

I got down there about 30 minutes before the start, got into my wetsuit and just sat on the beach taking in the spectacle. I saw a few of the pros (Ficker, Loeffler, Bonney, who at the athlete’s press conference had predicted a 46 minute swim – crazy fast), which I thought was pretty cool. I also saw Paula Newby-Fraser who was doing some TV for Ironman. I put my wetsuit on because I was starting to get a bit chilled, and just as I was getting ready to get into the water there were a few more drops of rain (cue more ominous music), but it stopped almost as quickly as it started.


This is Ironman, you don't need any frickin warm-up