Race Day Recap

The alarm went off at 4AM on Sunday morning to get ready for the race. I didn’t get the best night of sleep but I think it was more because I tried to go to bed at 8PM rather than thinking about the race. I had been getting to bed a little earlier each night prior and getting up earlier each morning but maybe that was too early to try and get to sleep. I immediately began taking in calories. My prerace meal consisted of a banana, bagel with peanut butter, breakfast bar and a cup of coffee. I left the hotel around 5AM to head over to transition to get body marked and drop my special needs bags off. It had rained overnight and there was rain in Sunday’s forecast so I packed some extra towels and dry running clothes. I dried off my bike, which I had to leave in transition overnight, and got the tires pumped up and ready to go. I headed to the lake where the bike special needs location was easy to find but the run special needs location seemed like a pretty far walk down Mirror Lake Drive. After dropping my stuff off, I headed back to the lake to get ready for the swim. I ate another breakfast bar, Gu gel and been sipping down some Gatorade along the way.

Swim

I got to the lake and started to make my way into the swim wave where I wanted to start which was between 1:10 – 1:20. As I waded around the lake to get wet, I ran into fellow ETA Lake Placid camper Brian Primost. Brian and I went into the same corral and lined up together. I had told Brian that he could draft off me since I figured if he didn’t, then someone else would. The swim start was a streaming wave start and they released swimmers in groups of about 30-40 swimmers at a time. Right when we got to the timing mat, we were told to stop and let the other swimmers go, which wasn’t a bad thing since we would have a little room to start once they did release us. Once I got into the water I caught up to some of the swimmers that were released before me pretty quickly. The first loop of the swim felt more like a wrestling battle royal as there was a lot of bumping and kicking. Nothing too bad, but it was just difficult to maneuver at times. I tried to stay to the outside but kept getting pulled into the middle. The back half of the swim loop cleared out a little but I did find myself swimming way too far to the outside. I finished my first loop with a solid time of 34:11 and ran through the timing mats on the beach and started my second loop. 

The second loop wasn’t as crowded as the first loop and I was able to utilize the underwater line at times to guide me through the swim. As I started the turn to head back to the swim finish, I noticed that it had started raining very hard. The storm would intensify and I started hearing thunder and saw some lightening. I wasn’t sure what they would do so I just kept going and hoped that the swim wouldn’t be cancelled. Luckily, I was able to complete my second loop in 37:04 and was ahead of my projected swim time of 1:15. That was certainly a good feeling to complete the swim a little faster than expected but I was also being mindful to not waste energy on the swim. Upon exiting the water, I had my wetsuit stripped off, draped it over my shoulders and wolfed down a GU gel as I ran to T1 in the pouring rain. I would find out that swimmers were pulled from the lake a few minutes after I finished because of the lightening and the final times would need to be adjusted. 

Bike

I got through T1 in 10 minutes and was off on my bike in the pouring rain. I was totally soaked and cold very quickly. My fingers lost all circulation and were bone white and my uncovered arms were red. I began the climb out of town with lightening still shooting across the sky. I got to the Keane descent and tried to be slightly aggressive but not stupid. No reason to end my race by wrecking on a slick road on the steep hill. I made it down the descent quickly and started onto the flats towards Jay. 

The rain continued for another half hour and didn’t stop until I was on my way back from Ausable Forks. The remainder of the first loop was uneventful until I got back into town and decided to pop a wheelie for some guys holding a sign. They were excited; I however got a flat tire from it.  If there was ever a place to get a flat, it was right there. I ran about 100 yards with my bike to the special needs area. As the volunteers were getting my special needs bag, I found some bike mechanics to help me fix the flat. They told me there weren’t supposed to physically help me fix it, but would coach me through it. I was moving quickly but they eventually took over and I reloaded my nutrition from special needs while the mechanics put the tire back on my bike. I think the whole tire change took three minutes. I consider myself lucky as I've heard about others that had much worse bike mechanical issues. My time for the first bike loop was 3:07:17 and almost 18 mph which was again, ahead of pace.

As I left town for the second bike loop the crowd was pretty rowdy. I found it interesting to see what people had put in the special needs bag. I saw one guy chowing down a slice of pizza – brilliant! The sun had come out and the roads were pretty dry by the time I started the climb out of town and down the Keane descent. I was certainly more aggressive on it the second time. I did feel the need for a bathroom break so I stopped at the first aid station after the Keane descent. I cruised along on the second loop much like my first. I finally caught up to my friend Brian McEntree from the PTC on the Haselton out and back. We both remarked how we were so ready to be off our bikes. I started the hill back up to Lake Placid. At one point, I came up to a pack of riders and I went to the outside of this group because I didn’t want to get stuck behind them going up a hill. As we started up a hill, I didn’t want waste energy by trying to pass them, but unfortunately I was called for a blocking penalty by a referee on a motorcycle. My first triathlon penalty, although I think it was kind of bogus because they should have penalized everyone for drafting. Anyway, I had to stop at the next penalty tent and report my bad behavior or I would have been disqualified. There wasn’t a time penalty, but the stopping and reporting the violation cost me at least a minute. After leaving the penalty tent, I trekked up the Bears for the final time and back into town. I think the crowd had shifted from the Bears as there weren’t quite as many people there the second time around. My second bike loop was almost the same time as my first loop, 3:08:08, and my total bike time was 6:15:25, almost another 15 minutes ahead of schedule. 

At this point I’m thinking that I’ve done two-thirds of an Ironman and all I had left to do was get through the run to become an Ironman. Just a few more hours to go…

Run

As I was getting ready in T2, I heard it starting to rain again. I did another quick stop in the porta potty and started off for the final marathon run. As I started down Main St, I felt my hamstring tighten almost immediately. Not a good way to start the run and I forgot my salt tablets in my bento box on my bike. Someone on the side of the road yelled for me to get sodium. I gutted it out to the first aid station and asked them for some salt. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any but a volunteer gave me some chicken broth which does have sodium in it. It seemed to ease the cramp and I was able to get going into my 8 min run/1 min walk intervals. The strategy was working well for me and I got out of town and the out and back on River Road without any further problems. As I started the hills back into town, my hamstrings were twisting and locking up again. The next three miles were pretty tough as I had to walk quite a lot whenever my hamstrings tightened. My first loop of the run took a little over 2 hours which was slightly slower than I wanted, but I had to concentrate on finishing and my health more than time at that point. I was definitely in survival mode.

I started to get some momentum on the descent out of town for the second loop but was tiring fast. I figured that I would try switching my intervals from 8/1 down to 4/1. It was definitely challenging at times trying to balance the cramping with moving forward. I took chicken broth and cola when I could at the aid stations. At one point I was walking with another athlete and told him about my cramping issue and he gave me two salt tablets. The salt tablets helped but I was still cramping and flat out exhausted as I finished the out and back on River Road running alongside Nicole Kropp Strand. As we crossed the bridge and began to head back to town, the hills started again. Nicole took off and I was simply too tired to even attempt to run the hills and decided that I would walk all of the remaining hills. I had three miles left to become an Ironman, I was so close. I struggled to get over the last few hills and knew the back part of the Mirror Lake out and back was mostly downhill. Once I hit the final downhill towards the Oval everything became surreal. I tried to take everything in for the last half mile. The downhill propelled me into the Oval at a nice running pace. Once I was in the Oval the crowds were cheering and I didn’t want the moment to end. I gave some high fives to the crowd along the way as I finally spotted the Finish line. 

About 10 yards before I got to the Finish Line, I heard the sweet sound of Mike Reilly’s voice:

“Paul Amos from Philadelphia – You are an IRONMAN!”

I crossed the Finish line and I had thought that my final time was under 12 hours, but would later find out the final time was 12:00:38 (Damn penalty!). The official shortened time was 11:13:20. I ran into Nicole again and Bill Kline after finishing as we meandered around the Finish area for a few minutes. A trip over to the massage tent was my first stop and then I was off to collect my stuff and head to the hotel for a shower and dinner. 

Congratulations to everyone that completed the Ironman that I had met and trained with during my journey to completing my first Ironman at Lake Placid. Also, a big shout-out to the volunteers and spectators that did so much to help all the athletes to complete the race. The course is no-joke but is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever raced. Mirror Lake is an absolute open-water swimmers dream and the Finish Line in the Olympic Speedskating Oval is one of the best Finishes anywhere (I've heard better than Kona). As I reflect on everything that's happened since I signed up, I'm proud that I created my own training plan, trained hard, and executed on race day to achieve my goal time. There's certainly room for improvement and I will start to explore those options in the future. For my first Ironman, I was completely satisfied with my result and how I raced.

I hope that people have found my blog helpful. I'll still post my final month of training and various tips and tricks that I've learned. I did learn a wetsuit trick two nights before the Ironman that was very helpful going from the lake to T1.