Swim Tips
1.) Get as much Open Water swimming practice as you can. I recommend the ETA Coach Open water swims in Medford Lakes, NJ. He holds them from 6 AM - 10 AM on Saturdays and Sundays and some Thursday nights and it costs $10/session. The lake has a rusty feel to it, but when you swim in Mirror Lake, you'll think you're swimming in a dream. I swam at least 10 open water swims in Medford Lakes before the Ironman.
2.) Rub dishwash soap on the inside lenses of your goggles and then wash the soap out with water. The film the soap leaves behind will keep your goggles from fogging up.
3.) Start stripping your wetsuit off in the water by unzipping and just getting water in the wetsuit to act as a lubricant. It will just strip right off down to the waist. I had the strippers remove the rest of it off my legs.
4.) After the remainder of you wetsuit is off, wrap it around your neck and over your shoulder (See below) as you run to transition. The wetsuit is wet and can get heavy if you simply carry it in your arms. With a long run from the beach to T1 at Lake Placid, this made the run a lot easier.
Bike Tips
1.) Learn to love hills. Lake Placid is nice that it doesn't have rolling hills but you need to be prepared to ride the hill on the climb from Jay back into town. Since Philly and the Schuylkill River Trail are pretty flat, I would ride to Valley Forge on the SRT and do a few loops around the park where there are some short steep hills. A supported bike ride that I signed up for in April was called the Fleche Buffoon in the New Hope area. The elevation on the climbs in this race makes the Lake Placid bears seem flat. It's an early Spring ride so the weather can be cool but is great ride for training. I also did a training camp in the Poconos with the Philly Tri Club to practice hills and to get a preview of the Black Bear triathlon bike course.
2.) If you get a chance to go to Lake Placid before the Ironman, I highly recommend it to get a feel for the courses, especially the bike course. After I rode the course during a training camp in June, I had a much better idea of my bike race strategy. I had an Achilles injury that prevented me from running the Run course during the camp which I think would have been useful as well.
3.) Practice your nutrition strategy during your bike rides, especially the long rides!
4.) Do don't wheelies for the crowd during the race. I was excited coming into town at the end of my first loop and saw a guy with a "Pop a wheelie!" sign so I did one...and then my front tire went flat.
5.) I saw that someone had posted about how many century rides you should ride during training. I was building up the mileage (70-80 mile rides) on my long rides in April and May when it was nice enough to start biking outside. I did my first century ride on Memorial Day, 3 more in June, and 1 on my last hard week in early July so 5 total. The one week that I didn't do one in June was when I raced the Black Bear Half-Iron distance triathlon.
Run Tips
1.) I learned this one a little late in my training but train for the run doing 8 minute run/1 minute walk intervals. I did the first ten miles in Lake Placid with this strategy and was on pace for a sub-4 hour marathon. Unfortunately I couldn't keep it up with the hills back into town and leg cramps but on the way back out of town for the second loop, I switched to to 4/1 and did that as long as I could.
2.) Train on hills for running as well. Philly has some great Spring races but most of them are pretty flat. I specifically signed up for the Bucks County Half-Marathon in April to get some hill work in during race conditions. Bonus, was that I came in second in my age group and had I not walked a little bit on the hills, I could have won my age group. The near miss taught me to not waste precious seconds and I used that to PR at Broad Street a few weeks later.
I'm sure there's more tricks and advice that I received and if I remember them, I'll add them in at some point.
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