It looks like the rain will clear out for this evening. I hope to see everyone there at 5:30 as usual. There will likely be a group doing intervals again this week. Make sure to get out there and challenge yourself if you are able!
We might go to Village Burger (or another location) this evening after running, so feel free to join in :)
Since everyone has heard a ton about Ironman Lake Placid for the last six months from us, here is a race report from Aaron:
Terry asked if I'd put together a
race/experience report from Ironman Lake Placid so I figured I'd share
some of my thoughts from the experience. Warning... this thing is
"Terry long".
First of all, Ironman is hard. Those of you
that know me have certainly heard me joke about "faking" various
distances whether it be a 5k or a 70.3. It's all a matter of
perspective but I cannot imagine ever seriously uttering the words "You
can fake an Ironman." Not only does it takes months of preparation but
you also need to be a little bit lucky on race day. With the majority
of the athletes on the course for well over 10 hours, you can almost
guarantee something will not go according to plan and you'll need to
adjust on the fly.
Pre-race:
We rented a condo a
few miles outside of town.
Ironman does their best to ensure that the
local economy gets stimulated so for us that meant athlete check in
on Friday, bike drop off
on Saturday and then a race
on Sunday.
Most hotels and condos increase their rates and number of nights to
meet the demand of 2500 athletes plus spectators coming to town. While
not being in the middle of town had some drawbacks, having our own
kitchen and being able to unplug from the insanity in the days leading
up to the race was well worth it. While other triathletes were getting
last minute rides and runs in through the overrun village, we had some
quiet mountain roads to prepare on.
Runner registration was
typical of most big events. Signage left something to be desired if
you came from the wrong direction but people were super helpful when
asked for assistance. At check-in, we signed our waivers, had our
weight taken (in case of any race day medical issues, weight is a key
indicator towards evaluating dehydration), picked up bibs and goodie
bags. Every year, they have a different event poster. Unfortunately,
2015's was pretty lame.
Post registration we headed to the
finish line for pre-race briefing.
This is where they warn you about
drafting, passing on the right, peeing on the side of the road, etc...
It never ceases to amaze me how much of the mundane they cover and how
little race specific detail they discuss. For example, two weeks prior
to the race there was major construction on the bike course. Seems like
this would be a good opportunity to let us know that the construction
we likely saw during training was resolved. You'd also think they'd
highlight some common sense items like "2400 of you won't be winning
anything. Descending into Keene in your aerobars in excess of 50mph is
not only putting your safety in danger but you are endangering the other
athlete's on the course. It isn't worth it." After the safety
briefing, we checked out some of the vendor tents. We tasted the bacon
flavored energy bars, got the schpiel on a salty electrolyte replacement
and took a pair of Hokas for a test run.
Saturday
we took our bike's into town to drop off at transition.
I was having
some rear tire issues and mistakenly walked right past the bike tech
tent and delivered my bike to transition. In Syracuse, the bike tech's
were setup in transition. At IMLP 2015 they had them setup a quarter
mile up the road. Not a big deal until you get your bike into
transition, discover a problem and then learn that they really won't let
you take your bike out. In a panic, I ended up trying to fix my bike
myself, made it worse and then proceeded to empty my karma bank begging
to get my bike out to the mechanics. I wouldn't be surprised to learn
that nobody else was successful in breaking their bike out of
transition. The mechanics were able to sort of fix the damage that I'd
done and it was going to have to be good enough for
Sunday.
Aside
from the event specific stuff, we took the opportunity to be tourists
in Lake Placid.
We've been through town a bunch but usually on the way
to hike or ski. The Olympic museum is actually pretty nice and we
enjoyed watching some CanAm hockey practices on the 1980 rink.
Race day:
Up at
3AM
for some oatmeal and then the ride into town. Unlike other triathlons
where you setup all your gear in a single place in transition, Ironman
gives you a bag for run gear and a bag for bike gear (along with some
other special needs bags).
Sunday
morning, while adding nutrition to the gear bags, another athlete
struck up a conversation implying that we wouldn't be swimming. Huh?
He explained that
there had been a fire in town Saturday night and there was concern that the debris that ended up in Mirror
Lake would pose a hazard. Needless to say, it didn't and we swam.
The Swim:
Typically,
this is my strength. My bike crash in May had me out of the water for
all of May and June. A better than expected finish in Syracuse had me
thinking I'd do OK but I knew I wouldn't be anywhere close to an hour. A
few years ago, IMLP transitioned to a rolling swim start. From what
I've heard, it is less impressive than 2500 people starting
simultaneously for the spectators but better for the athletes. At the
start line, they basically had signs indicating less than 60 minutes, 60-70 minutes, 70-80, etc.... I worked my way up to the middle of the
60-70 pack. The gun sounded and we started working our way forward. It
took about 3.5 minutes to hit the water.
I'd heard there's
an underwater chain that you can follow so that you don't have to
sight. I'd also heard that it can get a little rough following the
chain because of the volume of swimmers. I never saw it and with my
elbow a hair under 100% never bothered to fight in to get it. The first
300 meters felt like it took forever, surrounded by swimmers who seemed
intent on bumping into me or swimming in front of me and then slowing
down. By the first turn, I'd worked myself to the outside and found my
happy place. I spent most of the rest of the swim on the outside. Not
the shortest distance and less of a draft effect but I feel faster when I
can just swim. At the halfway point it was up onto the beach a 90
degree turn and then back into the water. Once again, I found myself in
a crowd and ended up working my way out of it. I do recall picking up a
swimmer moving a little faster than me about 45 minutes into the swim.
I made a game out of trying to keep up and it worked well for me.
Overall, I didn't drown, kept my goggles on my face without any
fogging and finished about where I hoped.
Coming up out of the water I
started working my wetsuit off until an idle wetsuit stripper through me
to the ground and finished me off. This magical moment was actually
captured on the Ironman video stream.
Transition 1:
Post
stripping, it's about a half mile run from the beach to the ice skating
oval where transition takes place. The footpath from the beach all the
way to transition was packed with cheering spectators. I watched the
crowd for familiar faces and before I knew it, I was trotting into
transition where I grabbed my bike bag and headed to the transition
tent.
In most triathlons, you wear your tri shorts and
singlet under your wetsuit. For Ironman's 112 mile bike ride, I
decided I wanted to the extra padding of my normal bike shorts. This is
where the transition tents come into play. Basically there are two
gender specific tents setup. You run in and there are rows of chairs
and volunteers to help you with whatever.
I found an
empty spot, tore open my bag and had a complete brain freeze. OK,
reboot. Grab the towel and dry off. But the floor is all wet and
covered with sand. Don't want to drop the bike shorts on the floor.
Enter extra careful mode. Get pants on. Get the shirt on. Towel on
the floor, dry the feet, bike socks and shoes. Helmet, gloves, glasses,
nutrition. Oh crap, where's my PB&J sandwich? Left it in my bike
special needs bag. Won't see that for 56 miles. No worries... spare
gels, gummies, salt tabs? Crap, those are in my special needs bag
also. Oh well. Wet swim stuff goes into the bag and off we go!
Exiting
transition volunteers are yelling out our race numbers so that other
volunteers can fetch our bikes. I don't here my number. Maybe if I
point and shout one of these people will yell my number. Nope. No time
to worry... I'll get it myself. I spotted Lena and Nha (well they
spotted me) before I grabbed my bike. Since I'd already spent an
eternity in transition, I burned a few more moments to stop for a
photo. Then off to grab my bike and get rolling.
The Bike:
The
primary goal going into the bike ride was to not go too hard on the
first lap. Lake Placid is hilly and you have to do it twice. To make
things more interesting, the worst of the hills are on the back half of
the loop. Due to my bike accident, I didn't get as much intense hill
training on my legs as I would have liked. I figured I'd target a
cadence of 80-85 rpm and a heart rate in the 140s when not killing myself
on the uphills.
You start on a pretty good downhill surrounded
by other cyclists still working to get their balance after over an hour
in the water. The crowds are nice in town so I took it easy and
absorbed what I could. before the climbing started. After the first
major climb I settled in offering relatively encouraging words to the
cycle monsters as the passed me like I wasn't moving. Maybe 7 miles in,
I saw one of those guys go over his handlebars and tumbling across the
road. My guess is he got clipped while passing too closely to another
rider. Rumor is they patched him up and he finished.
Special
thanks to Bob, Erin, Malinda and Drew for putting in a solid cheering
performance at the top of the pass. It was good to hear people cheering
specifically for us.
If you've never
ridden the descent into Keene it's an experience. It's about 5 miles of
descending and if you don't touch your brakes, you'll exceed 40 mph
without pedaling. Nice time to rest the legs but by the time you reach
Keene, your sphincter is feeling the burn. :) The roads were damp and it
was crowded so brakes were needed although I tried to keep it to a
minimum.
From Keene you head north to Ausable Forks
where you pull a u-turn and ride 6 miles back to the pass that takes you
up to Wilmington. There was a nice tailwind on the first lap and
20+ mph was effortless. I assumed that I'd see Kelly going in the other
direction in this area and she did not disappoint.
Turning
up towards Wilmington you get your first real shot of pain. As I came
on around the corner, you could see people suffering to the horizon. I
passed a woman free spinning and commented that I was jealous of her
"granny gear." She told me she'd specifically requested it just for
Lake Placid. The climb to Wilmington is long. At times, you'd swear
you are going downhill but really the grade has simply dropped to 2-3
percent instead of 6-10. At the top of the climb you get a nice view of
Whiteface as you descend to Willmington for a short out and back. The
race plan had been to eat my sandwich here. My poor packing meant that I
just grabbed a cliff bar from the aid station and suffered through
that.
The next portion of the bike drops out of
Wilmington and then begins the 10 mile climb back to Lake Placid. There
were some decent flats and nothing terrible aside from the grade right
outside the entrance to Whiteface Mountain. You follow the stream and
the views are pretty nice. Believe it or not, spectators actually found
there way out to this stretch of road. At the end of the 10 miles
there is an area called the 3 bears. You hit the mamma bear first and
really it felt just like a continuation of the previous 10 miles.
Carrying speed off of mamma, you can basically cruise over baby bear
before you hit the papa bear. It isn't the worst climb on the course
but you need to work for it. On the first lap, it was packed with
cheering spectators.
After the bears you get a nice
downhill through town to the special needs pit stop. I thought this was
pretty neat. They radio your race number ahead and a volunteer is
standing there NASCAR style with your bag. You pull up, they hold your
bike and you grab what you need. I grabbed my sandwiches and salt tabs
along with replacement gels. I completely missed the anti-chafe and my
rear would later regret this.
After restocking, you
hit one of my favorite parts of the course as you zip down a spectator
packed main street, up around the oval and then drop over a series of
steps. I was energized. I wanted to do bunny hops. I may have
actually done one before my brain said "flat tires are bad."
Going
into lap two I felt like aside from missing my sandwiches and salts, I
was on target. The course was much less crowded and I was able to fly
down the Keene descent. There was a short distance where a slower rider
held me up and I wasn't comfortable looking far enough over my shoulder
to make sure it was clear to pass at those speeds.
The
second journey to Ausable Forks definitely lacked the tail wind and the
sun was working it's evil magic. I focused on heartbeat and cadence. I
watched cheaters go by working in drafting teams. I wondered where
race officials were? I told myself not to worry. It's my race and I'm
going to finish.
Around mile 80 I had my first real problem.
My left quad momentarily locked up. Crud - drink water. Slurp. Out of
water. Just some warm Gatorade left on the bike and a good 3 miles to
go including a serious climb to the next aid station. I downshifted,
ignored my speed and tried to give my quad a break. This was the moment
when I first realized how hard an Ironman can be. Surprisingly, I
spotted Kelly in almost the same spot on the out and back which
encouraged me. I knew she was having a good bike and hadn't had any
glitches in the first 75 miles.
Eventually I reached
the aid station, took on a bunch of water and resumed the sufferfest.
At some point, my left aerobar got knocked out of whack so I had to jump
off the bike, pull out my tools and readjust that. The trip back into
Placid was a bit slower but uneventful. It was the middle of the
afternoon and you could see that people were really starting to suffer.
Crowd
support on the three bears on the second lap was almost non-existent. I
let a few of the quieter spectators know that I was trying to
concentrate so they should keep their voices down. They caught the
irony and urged me on. The bike ride finishes along the run course so I
caught glimpses of some of the insane athletes on their run as the bike
came to an end. It was hard not to push through this section but there
was still a marathon to run. One last pass through the crowd lined
streets of Lake Placid and then I was rolling into...
Transition 2:
I honestly don't remember much other
than handing my bike to a volunteer, running into our friend Eric who
was volunteering, grabbing my gear bag and heading to the change tent to
get nekkid again.
Unlike other triathlons where I've always
tried to move as fast through transition as possible, I lacked any sense
of urgency. It probably didn't help that the tent was quite warm.
Getting out of bike clothes and into running clothes was no small feat.
Shoved the cycling gear into a bag and handed it off to a volunteer
before trotting out. Quick stop to reapply gobs of suntan lotion then
off to the run.
The Marathon:
I stole my
marathon goal from a coworker. I've run marathons before. I even ran
one fast. I've never run one coming off a 7 hour bike ride before.
Having little expectation for a time, I decided I wanted to run the
entire marathon if my body would let me.
I think it
was around here that Bob and Erin made the mistake of getting my
intention. As Bob describes it, he received the wettest hug of his
life. Apparently, Erin has been hugged by many sweaty men so I didn't
register a superlative there. Lena and Nha were also on the run course
cheering and sending photo updates back home.
The run
course takes you down a couple of really steep hills at the outset.
Again, I tried to ignore pace and focus on keeping my heartrate in the
140s aside from the uphills where I had no chance. The course goes out
almost 6 miles before turning around and looping back. On the run out, I
felt like the entire thing was downhill and could only imagine the pain
at the turnaround.
In the mid afternoon/early evening there is
very little shade and I was extremely grateful to have my desoto skin
cooler.
Not only does it provide some extra skin protection with the
long sleeves, it gets downright chilly when dowsed with water and
includes pockets along the spine to shove ice into. My aid station
routine became eat a gummy on the way in, was it down with water, ask a
volunteer to fill pockets with ice, eat some banana, drink a little more
water and then throw the rest on my arms for cooling.
Overall,
the run went about as well as I could have expected with the limited
brick and speed training that we did. After 8 hours of nothing but
gels, my stomach decided that it required some download action but other
than that and the aid stations, I was able to run the first half
without problem.
On reaching the special needs area, I
let the volunteer know that I wanted to change out into dry socks and
shoes and she found me a nice rock to sit on. While I did that she dug
out some fresh gummies for me and had me on my way in no time.
The
rest of the run went about the same. With the out and backs, I was
able to keep tabs on Kelly and she was able to let me know that
something wasn't right and it was going to take her a while. The
suffering on the course was evident. There were at least as many
walkers as runners at any given point.
I ended up
chatting with a few guys who were run walking at my pace. We sort of
did the tortoise and the hare thing for a while, me being the turtle.
At the 20 mile mark, the one guy said something about only 6 miles to go
to which I replied, 6.2. He gave me grief about being "that guy" but
then got his snarky revenge a couple miles later when he ran by and let
me know there were only 4.2 miles to go. I ended up losing the rabbits
on the steep uphills into town with almost everybody walking them. I
got the last word in on the final out and back when I spotted him going
the other direction and I knew I only had half a mile to go. :)
I will say that spectator support on the hills was less than what I expected based on reputation.
The Finish:
As I approached the finish line I looked over my
shoulder and there were 5-6 runner within 10-15 seconds of me. I'd
read too many stories about people rushing the finish line or having
their finisher photo ruined by some goomba sprinting the finish. I
waved them by and then entered the speed skating track. This area
definitely had good crowd support and I did my best to get them riled
up.
High fives to everybody looking for them, verified the finish line
was clear and then just focused on keeping my arms up across the finish
line where a pair of volunteers seemed sure that I was ready to hit the
dirt.
Somewhere in there, an announcer said "Aaron
Gerega, You Are An Ironman."
I'd be lying if I told you that I remember
it. I was glad to be across the line in one piece and was itching to
go find out how Kelly was doing. I grabbed an appropriately themed
finisher's medal and did a quick photo before hooking up with Lena and
Nha to do some spectating.
The Aftermath:
We
spent the next few hours cheering people coming up the hill and
monitoring Kelly's progress with the internet. It was amazing to see
people pushing through the pain to get to the finish line. As the
evening wore on, the crowds moved away from the race course to the
finish line. If you look at the finisher videos, the crowds are
non-existent when the winners cross the finish line, substantial by 7-9PM and absolutely insane from 10 to midnight.
People
ask if I'll ever do another. I hate to say never but right now I think
I am good with one. As time passes, I'm stating to look back at
things I could have done a little differently. Having a finish under
your belt allows you to maybe push the envelope a little bit further. I
really did enjoy all of the training that went into it. I think it's
hilarious that I can go out and run 16 miles in August for the heck of
it. Would I recommend an Ironman to somebody else? If you like
triathlon and truly have the desire to get across the finish line, I
say, go for it. Just don't try to fake it.
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