My alarm went off at 4am and I woke up feeling pretty ready for the day I’ve been waiting months for. I prepared PB&J sandwiches for breakfast for Kevin and I and had a cup of coffee, whilst getting dressed and filling water bottles.We were out the door headed to Lake Placid forty minutes later. Like most other athletes, I had been watching the weather closely and low and behold, the weatherman was incorrect in that it was not thunderstorming (is that a word?) but only drizzling out.
pre-race B-fast
We parked, took a shuttle into the town, and I went over to get my body marked with my race numbers. The town was bustling with athletes and spectators, and the once-empty race bag racks were now filled. I dropped off my dry run/bike clothes, prepared my bike, got into my wetsuit, and went back out to find Kevin and drop off the bike and run special needs bags.
Mike Reilly!
The bike transition is a bit of a walk from the swim start, and so were the bag drop-offs. By this time, it was about 0600, and people were beginning to line up at the swim start. Ofcourse, after dropping of my special needs bags, nature called and I needed to get into a port-a-john line that was insanely long. But, what can you do when nature calls? So I stood in the extremely slow moving line with Kevin while my anxiety rose. I was worried I would not be at the swim start in time. Instead of focusing on the swim, my focus and stress was on getting to the port-a-john. Seriously. They should put out more of those things; Lord knows a lot of people will be using them! As time ticked away and it got closer to 0630 I started to panic. My friend, Jen, found us, and by this point I was fighting back tears. “I am not going to have time to go! This line is SO SLOW!!!!”
“Just line up and go in your wetsuit.” Jen suggested
“No no, I have to do number two!”
“Ohh.Yeah, can’t do that in a wetsuit.”
I looked around and then the tears came. I wasn’t going to make it in time to go to the bathroom and get to the swim start. The people in front of me were looking at me like I was crazy. And, they are right I probably was crazy at that point.
“I can’t believe I am crying because I have to poop.”
Never in my life have I had such stress over this matter.
“You will have time! Don’t stress!”
A few tears too late. I kept wiping my eyes, slightly embarrassed I was crying over such a matter.
About a million minutes later, I was able to get business done and zip up in my wetsuit. I hugged my race support team and after a few moments was off headed to the crowd of 2400 athletes about to head into Mirror Lake to start their race.In retrospect, such anxiety over having to go to the bathroom totally diverted all my emotions away from the swim, so by the time I ran over to the swim start, I felt very little anxiety in regards to the swim start. The IM race has a rolling start to the swim, according to the time you think you will finish in. It was so packed that I was in the 1:44-2hr swim time. But I didn’t really care. I was aiming to finish the swim in 1:30-1:40 (based on the one other 2.4 mile OWS I did in training) and figured I could always go faster in the water once I was in.
Sea of green and pink
Right before we entered the water, volunteers were at the start high-fiving you as you entered the water. Mirror Lake is pretty awesome, in that it has a yellow underwater cable that runs the swim course. You really don’t need to sight if you are over the cable. However, every swimmer wants to be over that cable, and I veered as far away from it as I could. (Away from the cable= away from mass of swimmers). I was able to get into a comfortable swimming rhythm pretty much right away, which is far from what I felt during the swim at Quassy Half (during that swim I think I did breaststroke more than freestyle). There were some people that kept swimming into me, but for the most part until I hit the turn buoy, I was able to keep my distance from people. I kept the pace comfortable and then started to count. 1…2…3….25….73…..100 I am not really sure why I count when I swim outside– maybe it is an automatic mental response to help pass the time? Or help with nerves? Anyway, once I reached 100 I started to count from 1 again. When I reached the turn buoy, I was faced with lots of swimmers swimming into each other as they turned. I tried to swim to the outside of everyone, and had to stop and figure out what was happening. I actually heard a swimmer shout “C’mon people! Take it easy!” Basically, a giant cluster f-ck.
When I turned to head back to the start, I was able to get back into an easy pace and try to focus on my form. As the speaker at Endurance Nation said, only swim as fast as you can keep your form. So, that is what I did. And I then began to count.
I reached the beach, where you have to get out of the water and run to enter it again for your second 1.2 mile loop. I was excited that I finished the first loop–it wasn’t as hard as I imagined it to be–and I purposefully did not look at my watch. I did not want whatever time it was to cause me to get anxious over being too slow. I entered the water again, and the counting began. Between the counting, I kept thinking, “holy crap, I am swimming in an ironman right now!”
I finally reached the swim finish and looked at my watch: 1:21. Holy crap! I wasn’t expecting to finish that fast, and to think i was even taking it easy so not to wear myself out.
Trying to get my wetsuit over my watch. Face of determination?
i was thrilled to finish my second 2.4mile OWS ever. 1/3 of the race was done! I ran over to a wetsuit stripper and they peeled my wetsuit off (hallelujah!) and I started the jog back to transition. On my way, I saw Kevin and Jen in the crowd.”I finished the swim!!!” I exclaimed.
Happy face!
The transition, as I mentioned before, is quite a little jog from the swim finish. Once I reached the Oval, I grabbed my bike bag and headed to Women’s changing tent. I had read about this part in blogs before, and people’s description of the tent was spot on. There were chairs to sit in, and it was warm and filled with partially naked wet women changing frantically into their bike gear. Volunteers were great, and helped you grab what you needed from your bag. Since I had no plans on winning this race (hahaha) I decided I wanted to be comfortable on the 112 mile bike ride so I changed into bike shorts and put on my Fats in the Cats Bike jersey. I can now say that I am butt buddies with another random woman after bumping into her when I was changing. I made sure I had everything, put on my helmet, and ran around the oval (more running?!?) to get my bike.
…To be Continued
A Rendezvous with Sneakers 