The family and i got to Lake Placid a few day early to hang out and we were lucky to get some incredible weather for the entire week. Little rain and lots of sunshine.. HOT though. lIke in the 90s. I pretty much took it easy during the week, hanging out on beautiful mirror lake and doing some easy rides with a little course preview.
Race morning:
Woke up a few minutes before 4 am after a pretty good nights sleep. Not too many prerace nerves. Ate a decent breakfast of oatmeal and a banana. Veena and the kids, real troopers got me to the transitiion area around 450 in order to beat the road closures.. TUrns out first announcement, the race was going to be wetsuit optional.. If you chose to race with a wetsuit, no hawaii slot but you still get a finish etc.. Well, I knew on my best day to include a PR run I would probably not have an easy time getting a slot .and if I did i would not be able to afford it this year so I took all the possible questions out of it - if i did get a slot i would be so tempted so I raced with the wetsuit....
Swim- The swim at Placid is all about getting to the cables that follow the course. If you swim close to or on the cables, you dont have to spot and just follow the cable on both loops of the course. THis saves time. But 2700 people would like to swim the one small cable. Well, I wanted the cable and I went ofr it.. Lots of cantact, getting kicked and punched and pushed for the entire swim but I gave as good as I got ... I was out of the first lap in 29 min and the contact did not settle too much on the cable for th second, but i did get some fast feet and drafted a little more lap 2-- out of the water in 59 min and change.. Goal one down- to break an hour at an IM which is the other reason I opted for the suit.. I figured I would be around 1:03 without it and really wanted to break the hour mark..
Transition. THe run to transition is out of the lake and about a 1/4 mile to the change tent. I grabbed my bag, threw on my shoes and aero helmet and got my bike with some help from all the awesome volunteers.. so great to have som many people volunteer for a race like this.. 1st transit
ion was much faster than in my first IM last year where it was all about soaking it in..
Bike- I wanted to stay around 200-210 watts for the ride. I figured this would keep me with a decnent split and not burn all my energy for the run. Getting out of the water in an hour allowed my to be pretty close to the front.. I was able to get just outside that 10 meter limit and really do some good pacing with some strong bikers.. Once again, not drafting but pacing really helps.. the marshalls pulled next to me and the two other guys I did the first lap with several times.. no penalty and they stayed with us watching a lot. ON one out and back portion we saw seveal big groups doing some serious drafting. such BS. Being a stronger swim biker than a runner makes you have to go for it kind of before the run but groups like that allow strong runners to really rest on the bike and than do their gazelle thing on the run... well i wasnt going for a slot so no big deal..but still I hate to see blatant drafting. So anyway I came in around 520, with the 56th best bike split in the 2800 person field and actually did not feel to spent. I had stayed on my nutrition, aiming for about 200 calories an hour drinking my perpetuem every 25 min.
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