IMLP Race Report - Greg Dowd
Summary
Total Time: 11:49:50
129/471 M40-44 AG
627/2456 OA
Swim: 1:11:05 (1:52/100m)
T1: 6:26
Bike: 6:02:59 (18.5mph)
T2: 5:30
Run: 4:23:52 (10:03/m)
Pre-race:
This was my first IM. I selected Lake Placid because I DO Believe In Miracles! As a former hockey player, I get chills thinking about what went down there in 1980.
We stayed at the Lake Placid Club lodges which are condos in easy walking distance to Mirror Lake and the oval. It was expensive and carried a 7 night minimum, but I’ve got 3 little kids so having a convenient home base was critical to keeping everyone happy during a long day. Plus, being able to use my own bathroom between body marking and the swim start was worth not being able to send my kids to college. A nice kitchen kept us from eating out too much. And being walking distance to my favorite place on earth, The Lake Placid Brew Club, was key to my sanity. I highly recommend the LPC Lodges.
I rented some Zipp 808s for the race. Was able to get them on Thursday and take them out in the 20mph gusts which scared the crap out of me. Those things are like sails. Needless to say, I was hoping for low wind on race day.
Race day weight was about 212 which is the lightest I’ve been since college. 205 was my goal (I’m 6’5”) but I like beer and chicken parm sandwiches too much.
Pre race nutrition: Drank 3 ensures at 2am and another in the am with some coffee and PB bread.
Swim:
I started the day at the lake by forgetting my bodyglide and then putting my wetsuit bottoms on backwards. Took me a while to figure out why it felt so strange and the straps weren't lining up. Duh. I guess I was in a daze contemplating the day to come. I had several ENers in my vicinity, so I tried to play it real cool…like I meant to do it. I think I got away with it. I think. 
!
!Over the past few weeks I must've asked about 40 people what their strategy was for the swim. Just about everyone I asked seemed like they were taking a more conservative approach, opting to stay a little in back of the front pack (except for Steve Ross, eh, who suggested getting as close to the scuba divers as possible!). I started to think that if everyone is staying back, then who the heck is up front?!? I compromised and went to the front on the right side of the middle. I think this was a good approach as there was surprisingly less contact than I thought there would be. The pounding would come in pockets, but in between the occasional beating I enjoyed some nice open water. If I did this race again, that’s definitely where I would start again.
This was my first race where I actually was able to draft off people successfully. There was such a plethora of draft choices! For the first half lap I enjoyed the help of a non-wetsuit gentleman with a 61 on his calf. I figured he was experienced! Then I switched it up a bit and tried a variety of feet – clean, dirty, finely pedicured, grossly ignored, big ones like Fred’s, small ones like Wilma’s, etc. It was like the buffet of feet. I did get a little jealous when someone would try to ease in and steal my ride. It’s like having someone cut-in on your first dance with a pretty girl at the high school dance. Get outa here, dude!
I found myself getting agitated a couple of times when people would climb over me. But I found the little extra kick you give to get them off you to be a real energy waster and really tried to just roll with the punches. I started focusing on “the line” that will come at mile 18 of the run very early, constantly asking myself what I can do at this moment to manage the line that will come some 10 hours later. The answer in the swim was CHILL OUT. I also would periodically open the neck of my wetsuit to let water rush in and cool me down as it was getting hot in the full sleeve suit.
It wasn’t until the return part on the 2nd lap that I finally hopped on the Mirror Lake Highway (the cable). Up till that point, I had taken a kind of wide line. Not really by choice though…other than the initial seeding, you don’t have a lot of choice in this swim. You go where the crowd takes you.
T1:
Holy rush! Going from the silence of the swim, to throngs of screaming people, to the naked steaming tent was a lot for the senses to handle! Got my wetsuit stripped with authority by two lovely ladies. Nice. In the tent, I put on some Chamois cream, more sunblock, ran out with bike shoes on. Bike was all the way at the end of the oval which made it easy to find, but a long run. T1 felt slow, but according to the standings it was some of my best work against the field. To bad the race isn't all T1.
Bike:
I ride by HR not power and the plan was to stay in high Z1 for 90% of the bike. I immediately noticed problems with my Garmin. It kept shutting off all on its own. Weird! So, I basically rode blind. I would turn it on to get a Heart Rate read every now and then and then it would shut off after a couple minutes. Tried to not let it bother me. Although I would have like to see my speed on the Keene descent as I’m pretty sure I topped 50mph for the first time ever. I’m moving a lot of beef and I was pretty aggressive. I felt very comfortable on the Zipps. The descent did not seem nearly as hairy as it did on my training runs.
Like my teammates who also didn’t eat the paste, I took it super easy and was passed by the entire world on the climb out of town. I think it was Keith who I saw on the first hill and we chuckled about it. Man, some people were working harder than hell on the bike. There was a guy at the lake on Friday giving some of us some unsolicited advice. He said he was going to ride 5:20 and run 3:20. I recognized him as he passed me on the flats out to Jay like I was standing still. Crazy thing was he was on a road bike STANDING UP TALL in the wind and absolutely hammering it. Of course, by lap 2 when I passed him he looked like a kid riding on his paper route that just wanted to be home playing video games. Totally defeated.
Nutrition was a 650 calorie bottle of Infinite. Had another in special needs along with a few Honey Stinger Waffles for lap 2 for some extra cals. Target was 300/hr. Took water at every aid station whether I needed it or not and drank as much as I could.
Hard to know my splits without the Garmin, but based on clock time I’m pretty sure I even split the bike at 3:01, 3:01 more or less. Never pushed it purposely out of Zone 1 until I got on the road back to LP from Wilmington, where I upped it to Z2.
Throughout the ride, I used the “feel the pressure on the bottom of your feet” hill climbing technique from the wiki which really helped me not overcook the climbs.
I felt great coming into town and T2. I thought I managed “the line” the whole ride pretty well. Crowds were amazing!
T2:
Dang! I lost a tone of spaces here. Not my best T2 effort. I did change my bike shorts for tri shorts and added sunscreen. By the way, I put sunscreen on the night before, the morning of, in t1 and again in t2 and I still got completely FRIED.
I stood at the pisser in the tent for a good 30 seconds trying to squeeze out my first pee since the morning. Like blood from a stone. Ruh Roh! Needed to drink even more, I guess.
Steve R, gave me a friendly shove in the tent which was cool, eh. Then he took off for a killer run and his IM PR!
Run:
I must’ve come out of the tent like it was a 5k, because I heard Mike Riley say over the speakers “WHOA BIG GUY! Slow it down. You’ve got 26 miles to go!!”. Cool. If the “Voice-of-God” says to slow down, you slow down. I now had my other Garmin on so at least I could manage my pace and heart rate. Found it DIFFICULT to slow down to a 9:30 target pace (that would change later!).
I was really feeling the heat. Thank goodness for the constant Macca Sponges shoved in my top along with ice cups dumped down the back. And it wasn’t that hot – only the high 70’s. Thank goodness the race was not 2 days earlier when it was 90.
Walked up the big hills back to town on the first lap for the most part. Family was waiting for me in Canadian Corner and asked how I was. I recall saying “I’m getting tired but otherwise feel ok".
By mile 11 or so I was still on Infinit and water only. Decided to take in a piece of banana and felt GREAT not long afterwards. I took this as a sign to take in more calories and other goodies at the buffet tables.
Crossed over mile 18 and said “Well hello, Mr. Line. Here you are. And I feel fine. Hahaha”. I was quite full of myself. Five minutes later I was walking with severe stomach cramps. “Mr. Line” smacked me on the back of the head and said “gotcha, Mr. Cocky!”.
Looking back I blame the cramps on the loss of discipline/focus with my nutrition that the banana started. I just started eating everything in sight (except the cookies!). Bad idea. Must stay disciplined next time late in the race!
Mile 19-23 were run until the pain was unbearable, then walk until it went away. I started to see my goal of 12 hours slip away. I just took water only from that point on trying to manage through the cramp.
By mile 23 I started to feel better and got back into my run. I recall having about 30min to do 2 miles and knew I had 12 hours in the bag. Saw the family in front of the brew pub and gave them each a sweaty kiss and they said they would see me at the finish!
Just before the oval the guy I was running with asked me if this was my first IM. I said yes and he gave me the honors to go first and said “go enjoy it and get a good picture”. That was cool of him. I high-fived every hand I could see in the oval and just soaked it in. Got a crappy picture though b/c I ended up unintentionally catching the next guy in front of me. Adrenaline rush. Oops!
It was so great seeing all the other ENers out there on the run. Some talking, some waiving, some pointing, some ultra-focused, and one shouting (LIEBS!). Lots of great support all around from the huge EN community out there. Thanks, guys.
Post race:
Normally after a triathlon I eat and drink like a Viking. Not this time. I could barely eat. I sat in the food court for about 20 minutes and stared at some grapes. Then got up to get a massage. But I started shaking uncontrollably from being cold so I just thought it best to head to the condo. Tthe sun was starting to set and I was getting really cold.
My wife bought me an Ironman pint glass and a growler of LP Brewery 46er which I drank in the hot Jacuzzi to try and warm up. That’s my girl. I was in heaven!
After a while I summoned the strength to go back to the oval and cheer on the 15-16 hour finishers. Then hit the Pub for a couple more pints with some of the ENers that were still there. A perfect end to a perfect day.
PS. Thanks Brenda R for this pic, and all the other picture sharing going on out there!
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Comments
Greg, you KILLED it as a first timer and a big guy...that's a LEGIT time and where I was, oh, 6 years ago. Now if you could only swear off the chicken parm!
Congrats again!
"I'll give you my chicken parm when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!"
Thanks, Patrick. I took so much of your advice from the talks and used it. Maybe a little too much. For example, when I came in to T1 I remembered you saying your first time you had a hard time getting your wetsuit into the bag, wasting time. The next time you learned to just ask a volunteer to do it for you. So that's what I did, and it worked great.
So, again, coming into T2 i remembered you say to hand the volunteer your bike AND your helmet...not just your bike. So the guy takes my bike, and i say, "Here, please take my helmet, too". He says, "no, you need to take it with you". I said, "PLEASE, take my helmet". Then like 5 volunteers said, "no, take it with you...we can't". I was a little delirious and just blurted out "BUT, PATRICK SAID YOU WOULD!"...I heard one guy say to another, "who's Patrick?". haha. pretty funny.
Volunteers were great though, all around. One of them was running so fast through the crowd to get me my special needs bag I thought she was Barry Sanders. I heard about another that after a guy forgot his helmet in T1, the volunteer ran to his condo to get his for him. He had a 28minute T1 (!), but at least he got to continue on thanks to the volunteer.