A View From Lake Placid

10pm Sunday, 1 Aug.
A week ago today at this time I had just completed my first Ironman, in Lake Placid, NY. While I was there I took notes for a daily diary of sorts, to be compiled electronically after-the-fact. I've finished that and now have something to show my friends in the nursing home some day when they can't believe I am an Ironman. I'm sure they will only look at the awesome pictures my husband, Dave, and my friend Lenny's son, Michael, took, as the blow-by-blow account of the week is novel-length.

This entire week I have continued to look at those pictures in order to convince myself that, yes, I really did this. Today I think it has finally sunk in.

I won't be publishing the entire week-long diary here. Be thankful you are getting the edited version!

Dave, our son Eben and I were in Lake Placid for a Wednesday-to-Wednesday week, with the race centered in there on Sunday, 25 July. When we arrived it was cool and rainy and as soon as the car door opened, my entire body relaxed. The long, gruelingly hot summer in our un-air conditioned house in the Philadelphia 'burbs had exhausted me, and with Ironman training on top of that, my body openly embraced the atmosphere in the Adirondacks.

I spent the next three and a half days napping, eating, napping, farting around on Facebook, catching the final stages of the Tour de France, napping, checking the blog of a friend of mine who had embarked on a Big Adventure of his own, napping, listening to a special mix of relaxing music compiled just for this occasion, and napping.

Come race day, I was the definition of relaxed. This did not go unnoticed by my family or my team mates. For the first time ever, I was calm and relaxed the night before a race (even before drinking a bunch of wine) and even on race morning I was on an even keel and all smiles and not the least bit tense. It's true! Ask Dave if you don't believe me. I said I was going to get me some Zen this year, and damn if I didn't do it just in the nick of time.

I know. Amazing. But I had a lot of help from my friends.*

Race morning dawned perfectly. Overcast, high 50s or low 60s or something, and threatening rain. I had raced two weeks before in Maryland in the pouring rain, questioning my intelligence in doing so. It seemed like I was risking injury too close to Ironman, but I did it anyway. It paid off. I had no fear of riding in the rain in the Adirondacks after that. Respect, yes, but not fear. Weather conditions were actually perfect for a triathlon.

I had my arms and legs marked with race number and age, as is typical for a triathlon... and with the smiley face I always request for the calf that doesn't get marked with anything. I had the best body marker ever. The face was my best one yet.

I had my swim plan. (See my previous post for background on that.) That is: Stay near the back; when the gun goes off, count to 15 and then swim. I let the Good Swimmers get their start and then I began mine. It worked beautifully. It took me about 90 seconds to count to 15, but it still worked well! Standing around me in the water waiting for the swim start, a couple of new friends asked me why I was smiling. I pointed to the nearly 3,000 swimmers jockeying for position at the flags and said, "because that's not me!"

I can say in all honesty that that was the easiest, most care-free triathlon swim I have ever had. I have decided that wave starts are for the birds. Being able to choose when you start is awesome.

Everything in Ford Ironman, Lake Placid is done in two loops. The swim is 2.4 miles in lovely Mirror Lake, in the form of two 1.2 mile loops. For each loop you swim out to a buoy, turn left, swim a bit more, turn left again, and then swim back in. I spent almost the entire second half of the second loop swimming very near the buoys that line the course. If you are close enough to them, you can see the cable that connects them running along the bottom of the lake, and that's a lot easier than looking up to sight the buoys themselves.

As I swam that last quarter, I looked up to sight a buoy when I lost sight of the cable, and I noticed it was raining pretty hard. The rain was bouncing off the surface of the lake and a light fog hovered over the water. It was in that moment that I thought of my mom, who passed away several years ago. She didn't argue with me when I refused swim lessons after the first day back in 1967 when I told her that they were trying to kill me there by making me sit on the bottom of the pool holding my breath until they said to come up.

I never did learn to swim as a kid. I learned three years ago before my first triathlon. My mom never learned to swim either. I know she would not believe I did this. She also would not believe how much I love to swim and how comfortable I am in the open water. That is the thought that popped in my head as I looked up to sight the buoy last Sunday morning. It made me laugh and laughing while you are swimming is very cool.


I finished the swim in exactly the time our team's swim coach predicted. I am in awe of that. I swam 4,000 meters in his pool twice, one of those times with wetsuit on in 90+ degree air temps and from those two training days he was able to predict dead on how I would do in Mirror Lake in air temps at least 35 degrees cooler. I am slow, but I get there with lots of energy for the bike.

Last year when I came to Lake Placid to volunteer and then register for this year, I rode one loop of the bike course and absolutely loved it. The area is so beautiful and the air is clean and the views breathtaking (if you have extra breath to give). It is obviously hilly, but I like hills because I am light enough to be able to scurry up relatively quickly... not so marvelous on the downhills. I broke 66 kph for the first time ever last Sunday on the long descent into Keene. Ok, that's 41 mph, but I like putting it in terms of kph cause it sounds faster. ha ha. That really ain't too fast, even in my aero-est, most streamlined position. 'Tis life.

So, among those I passed on the uphills were the same group of six or seven who would then pass me on the down hills. Occasionally I wouldn't see some of them for two or three hills, but eventually those half-dozen got back to me. It was fun making these new friends and exchanging witticisms as we passed. Certainly helped getting through those climbs.

Me passing someone on the way up: "Oh, look... now you're going to have to pass me again."
Someone gasping asks me as I pass them going up: "How much do you weigh? 55 lbs?"
I asked someone who I thought was already ahead of me: "What did you do, stop for lunch? I thought you were way ahead of me!"

At the end of the first bike loop you can stop briefly to load in supplies packed in "special needs bags" at the side of the road. The volunteers were a well-oiled machine, radioing in race numbers as we approached, and then directing cyclists to the exact spot where the volunteer was waiting with bag in hands. I rifled through my bag, rejecting the three extra tubes and four extra CO2 cartridges I had packed in case I got two flats on the first loop and was riding in on a flat the the special needs area. LOL. Really, I had both belt & suspenders at the ready. I loaded in the nutrition and bottles I had packed for the second loop and then I looked around, over my shoulder. The volunteer said, "What? what do you need?" I said, "Porta-pot?" He said, "I'll hold your bike, over there!" and pointed. I dashed and got in and out in about a minute. He had walked my bike to the porta-pot door and I literally took one step out of the john and another one onto the bike. The volunteers at this race rocked. As I headed out for the second loop, I heard the announcer say my name over the loud speaker and everyone cheered. Really, how awesome is that? They don't know me from Jane, but they treated me like a star.

The second loop felt faster than the first, but it wasn't. The wind picked up through a canyon area with the heaviest climbs. It was a challenge and I knew that if I didn't take it somewhat easy I might have a bad run, but I was so tired of being on the bike and so ready to start running that I kept at about the same level of exertion, even if I did slow down a bit. I ended up finishing the bike course about 15 minutes slower than I was shooting for.

I always wondered how I could run a marathon after having biked 112 miles. It's the one thing in all of this that it's not possible to train for. Running 20+ miles after a century ride would create a recovery-time setback in training that would cost too much. So, I tried to simulate the fatigue from cycling 112 miles by running 20 miles after work a couple of times. Both times I "bonked" from too little nutrition and not enough rest (cumulative fatigue from training and the heat). I learned absolutely nothing from those runs. After resting, napping and eating well during the taper, I was actually much better prepared for what lay ahead. It just wasn't possible to train for it. There is also a wild card that is too unpredictable to plan for. There is no way to know how the body will be fairing after 10 or so hours already on the course. Being mentally prepared to deal with whatever comes up is all you can really do.

Thinking about it now, I am surprised at how ready I was to run once I got off the bike. I never once thought, "how am I going to run a marathon now?" It was just time to do it.

Here was the plan: Run the first six miles, walking only through water stops. Eat a gel before the first water stop (carried with me) and then use the water stops for the rest of the nutrition I would need... gels, coke, sports drink, water, ice. I already knew I wouldn't be interested an any of the other stuff they had there. I didn't train with any of that. Take a second gel at 3 miles (about half-way to the turnaround), and a third gel at the stop after the turn around. At about 10 miles or so there are a couple of hills I would walk in addition to walking through the water stops. And then I would try to execute the second loop similarly.

Here's what happened: I ran the first 10 miles as planned, but started feeling nauseous whenever I put something in my stomach just after about the six mile mark. The gel I tried to take at 9 miles was so revolting that I couldn't force it down. After that, I pretty much sucked ice for the rest of the run. I felt great when I didn't try to put something in my stomach, so I stopped trying.

The run was very social. I saw my team mates all looking strong on the run and we cheered each other, and I saw several of the same runners who I passed or who passed me as we went by each other later on in passing on the out-and-backs. There was a guy from the bike course who also had a smiley face on the back of his leg, and I recognized him because of that on the run. As I passed he said, "D-oh! I knew you were going to get me on the run." After that, every time we passed by each other on the out-and-backs, he and a large group of friends he was running with would shout across the road to me "Go Go Go Diane!!!" and I would shout it right back to them. It was really great. Ironman is like nothing else.

The end of the first loop was oh, so slightly depressing because the crowd was cheering mightily for those who were finishing and unable to distinguish who was finishing and who still had to go out for the second loop. Encouragement to "finish strong" was a little tough to take. The Bear climbed on my back but I shrugged him off as soon as I made the turn to head (downhill) out of Lake Placid for the bulk of the second loop. Our team, the TriDawgs were there in a very organized band, texting each other to be in position at critical places along the course. That support was so awesome, especially on the run. They are all already veterans of Ironman, and most of them had done Lake Placid, so they knew exactly where to be and when. It was wonderful! As I made that turn and headed down the hill, I saw Coach with a huge smile on his face, and who wouldn't be affected by that? The Bear went running for the hills and the smile was back on my face.

I walked a little more than I expected to in the second loop. Okay, a lot more, to the tune of a half-hour extra time on the course. After the second turn around, with a little more than six miles left to go, I was ready for it to be over. The Bear was back and this time I took deep breaths and gave myself a pep talk. I was at the point in the course farthest from the finish line and I needed to keep running as much as possible to stay warm. The air was feeling pretty darned cold at that point! I told myself that the finish line would come faster if I ran, so I employed a run/walk strategy that helped me out earlier in the year during a tough race, knowing from previous experience that it would be temporary; just long enough to get some strength back for the end. I looked at my watch, noted that I was going to end a half-hour off, and so with that recalculation in mind, I began running again and kept the mini-goals in reach.

By the time I got back to the top of the first big hill toward the end and saw my team mates I had gotten a second (or fourth) wind and was running pretty strong. They ran along the edge of the road with me some to give me encouragement and my team mate Vince got the crowd in the game shouting, "This is my friend Diane! This is her FIRST Ironman!" and everyone cheered madly and it was the most awesome feeling. REALLY hard to walk, even up the worst hill of the course, with all of that cheering going on!

The last two miles, the out-and-back that starts very near to the actual finish line, was a gauntlet of cheering well-wishers... to a point. The last half-mile to the turnaround and then the half-mile back thinned out quite a bit, and my brain was screaming "where's the damn turn-around???" On the way back a friend of some of my team mates, someone I actually met and trained with once last winter, but hadn't seen since and didn't recognize last Sunday, caught up to me in the last mile and asked to run with me. I said "of course, but I will probably take a walk break so that I don't collapse in the Oval in front of the cameras!" So we ran together a little until I needed that 30 second break, and then Mike continued on. I don't think he knew who I was either. I'll have to try to get in touch with him soon!

During that last walk break the sounds from inside the Oval were upon me, and I heard the song on the PA... "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by the Proclaimers. This is a song recently gifted to me on a new iTunes running playlist. I have been totally loving this new playlist and when I heard this song I couldn't help cut my walk break in half so that I could cross the finish line to "...to be the one who walks 5,000 miles and falls down at your door." ha ha. Later, my son said, "Did you hear the song you finished to before you got to the Oval? Can you believe it??" He had also been enjoying my new playlist and we had been having fun with the "awful" Scottish accent in that
song.

I crossed the finish line at 14:35:45, which was 35 minutes longer than my target, which is totally cool. You gotta have a target, but know that with your first one it's really just about finishing. I was pretty dehydrated, with an impressively low blood pressure and my body temp was low as well. I took advantage of the deluxe accommodations of the medical tent, and then upgraded to the ER for a few hours. I highly recommend a shot of anti-inflammatory meds in your next post-race IV. The next day I was good to go.

Monday was a rest day and then Tuesday Dave & Eben & I went kayaking from a team mate's rented condo on Lake Placid. That was just what the doctor ordered, except I didn't train for it and discovered that there are some muscles you don't utilize in Ironman training. Who knew? After kayaking, we went to the top of Whiteface Mountain and soaked in the views of Lake Placid and the region around it. Incredible.

It was the best vacation of my life!


*There were so many friends who helped and supported me all year. The entire Tri-Dawg team of course, and especially Carrie, Chris, Margaret, Lenny, Eric, Marc, Bill and Vince. I never would have even signed up if not for Marianne, who mentored me all year and basically made this possible for me. I already miss working out with her! Marianne and Lenny raced at Lake Placid, too and really did well. Marianne won second place in her age group. Congrats to both of them! Our team has the best swim coach on the planet. I have no idea how I would have done this with only three years of swimming experience if not for Coach and especially this year with all of the extra time he put in with me. Tri-Dawg generosity is massive. I have other generous friends who gave me tons of support this year, and especially toward the end when I was really getting exhausted, most notably Terry & Debi. I am excited about passing all of this generosity forward.