Preamble.
Ironman Lake Placid is a gorgeous race nestled in the Appalachians. It’s comprised of a 2.4-mile swim in Mirror Lake, a hilly 112-mile bike ride (7300 ft elevation gain), and a marathon touring the town and ski jumps for the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” Winter Olympics (950 ft elevation gain). Each segment was 2 loops (i.e. 2×1.2-mile swim; 2×56-mile bike; 2×13-mile run).
It seemed like not only the entire town of Lake Placid but also the towns of Keene, Jay, Wilmington, and everything in between showed up for this race. There were people dressed as hot dogs and unicorns, tents blasting all genres of music (seriously, from pop to Church), and so many signs for a racer I didn’t know but surely felt connected to by the end, #1033 (“go Mommy!”), everywhere on the course.
One of my biggest takeaways and recommendations to racers is: ask the volunteers how it’s going. I love doing this for two reasons: 1. It takes my mind off myself and the race for a moment, helping me appreciate what others are doing for me, and just doing with their life on that day period. 2. They always look confused and not sure what to say, which is kind-of funny!
The thing about training and racing is, you choose one path, and you can’t go back and choose another path to see what would have happened had you done something else. The path I chose for training for this event was a new one for me: I did less training volume and less intensity than I did 3 years ago for arguably my best triathlon performance to date (Santa Cruz 70.3). Of course this was a full Ironman, so it would be different, but I didn’t even have a recent basis of power and threshold work like I’d had in the past before doing more race-specific work. I was particularly worried about (and lacked confidence from) the somewhat spotty run training I’d done because of on and off injury fears since Bandera 100k in January. Though I’ve been stacking longish runs for many years, I think there was something about the pressure of a road marathon, which I’d never done before, that was a bit scary. I had no idea what would happen at mile 5, 10, 15, 20, or even 25 of this run, but there was only one way to find out!
The Morning.
In the morning, I put on a tri suit and a lot of Aquaphor. I’d gotten the tri suit off Facebook Marketplace two weeks before when I saw it might not be a wetsuit-legal swim. I didn’t love it — it had very small pockets and I strongly dislike any padding on my butt (including for biking) — but it was the best I had for the job. Breakfast was a mint chocolate Clif bar, some Scandinavian Swimmers, and some electrolytes. This wasn’t ideal though and left me not wanting sweet gels. Next time I’m definitely packing oatmeal or bread. I did a little morning mobility/core/hip routine, and we were off! Kevin and my dad walked me to the start line, which was fun. The town was so alive. I imagined zooming out and seeing all these little ants walking toward a town center in the valley of mountains. We said bye at the entrance to transition, and I went to get organized. We didn’t know if it’d be a wetsuit-legal swim or not since the day before the water temperature had been 76.2F (it has to be 76.1 or less to be wetsuit-legal). Eventually I found out it was wetsuit-legal at 75.5 today, so I changed out of the tri suit and into shorts (with functional pockets and no butt padding) in a porta-potty then threw my wetsuit on. I was in a bit of a scramble by accident but everything got done.
The Swim.
It was a hurry up and wait situation. I think we waited about 30 minutes before entering the water. I put myself in the 60-70-minute swim wave. Looking back on it, I should’ve gone in the under-60 wave as I ended up swimming over a lot of people, even in the first lap. The swim was a bit more wild than I’d anticipated! It was super choppy considering how smooth the lake looked when I woke up. Good thing I’d had all that practice in the San Francisco Bay, my introduction to open water swimming 🙂
I hadn’t thought about what I’d think about during the race much before the race. I did a little visualizing just to make sure I had aid station logistics down and to play through some non-ideal race scenarios like thunderstorms or getting knee pain bad enough to stop. Overall my preparation was okay, perhaps a little scattered and under-prepared just because of busy work, not having a ton of motivation since spectating Western States in June (for some reason I still can’t pinpoint), and not wanting to take this thing too seriously (yeah, ok, you could argue it was a bit of a defense mechanism).
Anyway, during the swim I ended up repeating to myself, take it easy, kick less, glide more. It was a very engaging swim, physically and mentally. I took and exchanged some kicks (sorry), and I worked hard to aim for the big buoys while avoiding getting tangled in small ones. By the end, I was excited to get out of the water and pleasantly surprised that my arms were not tired at all. Amazing volunteers got my wetsuit off me exceptionally quickly, and I ran off to transition to the bike. After the fact (I didn’t record the swim or look at the clock during), I was surprised to see my relatively fast swim time, considering how easy (and sometimes downright slow) it felt!
The Bike.
As usual, on the first loop (of two) of the bike course, many beautiful, loud, speedy bikes passed me. I was happy to be biking, and my legs felt good. I started fueling and hydrating immediately (sports drink in my starting bottle, plus gels… after the first aid station just water plus gels). The roads were a bit wet from rain earlier, but the mountains were pretty in the misty clouds, and the little lakes and rivers were full. Everything was going well, and I was really proud of descending comfortably, mostly in aero, down the hill I’d been nervous about for weeks, which was a confidence boost. I felt very focused. Then around mile 20 I started feeling nauseous and got a little disproportionally panicky that this was happening already. It’s fine, you’re fine, keep moving forward. Be adaptable… I decided to lay off fueling for a bit, but an hour later I decided maybe it was the caffeine in my first gel that made me feel funny. I knew I needed to have something or pay later. Interrupting this thought, pretty suddenly: downpour, big rain. Sitting in the nausea and rain, I was like… why the heck do people do this. But then I was also like, all these other people are doing this, you can do it too! Things will get better. Maybe 15 minutes later the rain let up a bit. Be curious…so I forced down another gel. Instantly I felt energized, so happy I could take a gel without making the nausea worse, and then the climb back up the mountain was easier than I’d remembered from a training ride.
Around the second loop, the nausea really was abating and I resumed pretty good fueling. It remained in the background for the rest of the race, but really nothing to interfere with fueling or comfort, which I was extremely thankful for. The second loop of the bike also featured a torrential downpour, this time with a bit more wind, but I handled it much better! I also was passing some spectators who were still out cheering despite the weather and thanked them for coming out, which was a boost. A few times I did catch my mind wandering to the run… how on earth am I going to run a marathon after this… It’s okay to feel and not judge… Experience it and learn… you have to make it through the bike safely to even run… stay present. Overall, I was satisfied with the bike portion (second loop time within 10 minutes of the first) though of course always will wonder if I could’ve gone a bit harder.
The Run.
Finally, as my butt had just about had it, it was time to run! There was very slippery cement in transition so I took my time and walked. I’d planned to carry a bottle with Skratch on the run, but I ended up leaving it in transition because it wasn’t very hot out and I was still nauseous. Anyway, I left for the run with a little group, and oh my gosh, what jelly legs! This hadn’t really happened to me before in any other triathlon or in training… I had jelly legs for THIRTEEN miles. Not even kidding. I kept waiting and waiting, and I kept believing, you’re doing great… be patient, that they would come to me. There was a long quiet out and back section that seemed endless, but on back section you get to see the ski jumps dwarfing even the nearby mountains. Making our way back to the town, some little kids were giving out high-fives, and another kid had a “tap here to power up” sign, which I slapped… both times I went by.
Through the half marathon mark, when my legs started feeling like my own again, I was excited but also unsure. In general I ran the run a bit scared. I was scared of blowing up and of getting injured, but mostly just of blowing up, especially after chatting with some people around me who seemed more experienced and like they were taking it really easy. A mini goal I had was to run the entire marathon, no matter what speed. I ran everything (including the 10+% hills… I was wearing a Broken Arrow t-shirt… and, you are a trail runner) but took my time through the aid stations, hydrating and icing every mile and fueling every 2 miles. With 3 miles to go, I was pretty sure I’d do it and even negative split the marathon by 1-2 minutes. In retrospect, I think I could’ve picked up the pace earlier in the run, based on heart rate and subjective data, but it’s hard to know. I re-entered town, people were cheering, I ran up the hill past tons of others walking, allez, allez, my family was yelling sooo loudly, “go, Serena, go!” and I rang that darn second-loop bell. I almost let the high get too high, but I reset on the next quieter section. Smooth is fast. My quads were protesting, but in my mind, allez, allez. I tried to feel everything I was feeling because you don’t get to feel this way that often, as I surged the last downhill into the finish line.
Final Thoughts.
Some takeaways from this race:
- Eat something, drink something, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
- Everyone’s in the same race conditions: if they can do it, you can too.
- Don’t let the highs get too high or the lows too low. With lows, be patient, things will get better. With highs, refocus, it isn’t over ’til it’s over.
- Check your tires AND spin your wheels morning of the race (my back brake rubbed the entire ride—I let the sound become a familiar comfort, but still…!)
- Aquaphor is the bomb for anti-chafe.
- As noted earlier, ask the volunteers how they’re doing!
The stats (because they don’t matter but they also do 🙃): Overall time 11:37:11 (swim: 1:03:19; bike: 6:29:29; run: 3:52:43). 11th out of 61 finishers in age group, 85th out of 458 women finishers, 382nd out of 1928 overall finishers (*only 24% of all the finishers were women?!?!!).