Lake Placid Ironman by Kasandra Garner

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.
John Burroughs

 

John Burroughs was a naturalist who was born and lived much of his life in the Catskills, which is just south of the Adirondacks in upstate New York.  I read some of his essays on my way to Lake Placid (along with the humorist Charles Dudley Warner who wrote about the Adirondacks and is known for the quote: “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”  This proved to be true during the Ironman.)  There is always a price to doing an Ironman:  the obvious price is the cost of registration along with plane tickets, bike transport, lodging, a week off from work, in addition to all the gear, nutrition….yeah, the list goes on and on.  If we ever really added it up we would find that we could have sponsored an entire African village for a year through World Vision.  Then there is the price of time:  time spent training, sometimes with friends but often alone.  I love training, so I am not going to complain about it.  I choose to do it, I would do it even if I weren’t racing:  maybe not as long or as hard, but I LIKE running and swimming, and sometimes I even like cycling.  When I read that quote above, I think of the love and patience my family shows for me by never complaining about the time I spend training.  And how do I repay them?  I drag them along with me to Lake Placid because I needed them there with me for this epic event.

 

The adventure started early in the morning on Thursday when Wayne Patterson, my husband Bill, my two children, and myself all piled into the man-van at the butt-crack of dawn to drive to the Nashville airport.  Why not Huntsville, you might ask?  Because flying out of Huntsville our only option was to fly to HOUSTON and then back to Boston.  An extra 4 hours in the air!!!!  From Nashville we went to Newark and then Boston, and that was where the first adventure began:  a Cessna 8 seater from Boston to Saranac Lake, NY.  What a gorgeous flight!  Taking off with views of Boston Harbor, then flying into the Adirondacks as the sun was setting.  My son got to sit next to the pilot.  We landed at a little airport that was straight out of the sit-com “Wings” and picked up our rental car.  On the 15 mile drive to Lake Placid we got into our first traffic of the day:  cars backed up on the curvy two lane road connecting the two resort towns.  We found out later that a 20 year old had begun a reckless rampage in an F-150 earlier that afternoon in Lake Placid, nearly running over pedestrians before fleeing town with State Troopers on his tail, only to crash head on into a family in a Honda Fit - killing the parents and leaving an 11 year old in critical condition.  I hugged my children a little longer and harder than usual when I put them to bed that night.

 

Our lodging was a snug town home about a half mile from the transition and just off the bike and run course.  It was decorated “shabby chic” with the requisite moose and bear décor.  Ironically, it did not have an Adirondack chair.  It did have retro 1980 Lake Placid Olympic posters.  Walking around town the next day my excitement was building:  Lake Placid is one of those places that is just what you expect, a kitschy mash-up of ski resort town, granola/hipster scene, Olympic nostalgia, and summer camp.  You felt like you should be wearing LL Bean and going canoeing with your matched set of Labrador retrievers.  I loved every minute of it as I picked up my bike from Tri-transport.  Ignoring the advice of every Ironman veteran I went to the local bike shop and had aero bars put on my road bike.  I know, I know, you should never do anything the day before the race you haven’t trained with for three months, but... I used those suckers to rest my back and shoulders many times on the bike course.

 

The next day we drove the bike course.  The scenery was breath-taking, and so were the hills.  Even though Wayne and I had incorporated a lot of climbing and rollers in our long rides, somehow I had convinced myself that Lake Placid would not be as bad as riding around Jackson County.  WRONG.  And with about 11 miles of climbing at the end of the 56 mile loop, I realized we should have done our climbing at the middle and END of our rides instead of in the beginning and middle.  On the second loop I would be starting the worst climbs at the point in my training where I was falling gratefully off my bike as my odometer hit 100 miles.  My stomach started to feel like it had when the Cessna hit turbulence.  This is when all that money you spent getting here comes in handy, because otherwise you might just decide to skip the race and do some sight-seeing.

 

As always a trip to the swim venue made me feel better.  My swim warm up consisted of wading around a bit and looking wistfully at the sailboats.  I racked my bike and turned in my gear bags, then it was time for a big late lunch and a nap.  My parents had arrived by now so my race support crew was complete.

 

I slept great the night before the race – must have been the mountain air.  I woke up just before my alarm went off at 4 am and popped out of bed.  Wayne and I had coffee and I ate a blueberry muffin.  Then we walked to transition for a final check of our gear and to drop off special needs bags.  I realized I had hung my bags up in the wrong place, but luckily someone moved them for me and everything was ready to go.  It had rained overnight and was supposed to storm at sometime during the morning.  It was overcast for the start of the swim.  Two years ago, Lake Placid changed from a mass start to a rolling start, with swimmers “self seeding” and going into the water in big groups, with race officials randomly stopping the forward movement of swimmers every so often to clear out a bit of the congestion.  It was still a very crowded start, and lots of traffic in the water.  I got bumped, swam over, my feet knocked, jammed, hemmed in, and kicked in the throat.  My first lap was a desultory 37 minutes and I hoped for a smoother and faster second lap.  The traffic was a little better at the beginning of the second lap, but then it started to rain and then it started to pour.  The water became choppy and the buoys hard to see.  People started swimming crazily (I felt like I was still going straight, of course, but people would appear out of nowhere and swim across my path at an angle).  I heard the first clap of thunder as I exited the water but it may have been thundering before that, and lightening flashed as a stripper peeled off my wetsuit.  I saw my parents as I staggered the half mile through the rain to transition.  I think my Dad was telling me I was insane to consider biking in a storm, but my Mom was yelling “Go Kash!” so I kept moving.  By the time I got to the changing tent it seemed to pointless to change into dry cycling clothes, but for the first (and probably only) time I was grateful for that awful 2013 Lake Guntersville Olympic where we all froze to death in the rain, because thanks to that experience I had packed extra clothes in my bike gear bag.  I kept my tri suit on, but put a long sleeved shirt, a bike jersey, and a light rain jacket on over it.  As I ran my bike to the mount line, lightning forked over the ski jumps as a peal of thunder shook the ground simultaneously.  The storm was just overhead.  I seriously considered going back to the tent.  But the lemming mentality is strong in triathletes, and I saw all of the other fools ignoring the weather and heading out on the bike, so I shrugged my shoulders and hoped that with 2700 other athletes out there the odds were in my favor. 

 

The route out of town is twisty and steep, so we all got to discover just how hard it is to brake in the rain from the get-go.  Then a few climbs into the hills, and then the long descent into Keene where – in good weather – you can pick up a lot of time by racing downhill for 5+ miles at high speed.  In a thunderstorm you hold on for dear life and hope that the puddles aren’t hiding a pot hole.  By the time I hit the gentle rollers between Keene and Jay, my muscles were clenched from cold and constantly feathering the brakes to keep my speed in check.  I had passed people pulled off shivering, so I was glad I had the extra layers and had left my tri bike and carbon wheels at home.  The storm moved off but the rain continued all the way through the out-and-back to Au Sable, a beautiful section along a boulder-strewn river that was the closest thing to a flat section of the course.  The rain finally stopped around mile 40, and I was able to stop and take off layers about mile 50.  I made it up the “Bears” (the three final ascents are called Baby bear, Mama bear, and Papa bear) enjoying the cheers of the crowds lining the course on either side as I huffed up Papa bear.  From the town of Wilmington at the base of Whiteface mountain all the way into the Lake Placid the crowed support is phenomenal.  You really need it through that section, too. 

 

I dumped my extra layers at the bike special needs station, forgot to apply sunscreen, and decided not to take the time to change into dry bike shorts.  Mistake, as it turned out, as the second loop was murder on my nether regions in the tri shorts.  But I would have lost a lot of time going all the way to a port-a-john to change, as public nudity is grounds for disqualification in an Ironman.  Once I got back out of town, I stopped at the first aid station and let a nice volunteer slather me in sunscreen, knowing I would have a horrible break out later in the week because it wasn’t the special hypoallergenic stuff I have to use.  It also stung like the dickens on the back of my neck where my wetsuit had rubbed due to my forgetting to apply Vaseline before the swim.  But I was cheerful because the sun was out and the wind wasn’t too bad and the Adirondacks really are gorgeous.  I took the descent into Keene a bit faster, and this time was able to appreciate the grandeur of the river that cuts through the mountains as you come into Keene since my eyes weren’t glued to the pavement.  I started reading the signs, too, and I laughed at how many people had friends that went to a lot of effort to cheer them on with ridiculous posters.  One poor guy had photos of himself from when he had 80s glam-rock hair plastered all along the course with messages like “Rock the course” and “No matter how bad you look, at least you don’t look like this anymore” type messages.  I got a big kick when I passed an alpine vacation home where a group of aging hippies were drinking under a canopy and blaring the Queen song “Bicycle.”   

 

I had to get off my bike around mile 90 before the final climbs from Wilmington to re-apply chammy cream.  My lower back and butt were definitely ready to be done with the bike.  The Bears were a lot worse the second time, even with people yelling for you.  There were some young fit men in very little clothing and a man who reminded me of Mike Gerrity in blue checked petticoats, which were nice distractions.  I spent a lot of time in my little chain the last 22 miles.  Finally the bike was over and I didn’t care how long I had to run, I was just glad to be off the blankety-blank bike.  A volunteer offered to help me in the change tent and I told her no thanks, I wasn’t in a hurry.  I changed into dry shorts (finally!), dry socks, and a dry shirt and immediately felt a lot better about life.  I took two Advil for a pinched nerve between my shoulder blades and started walking.  It took me a couple hundred yards to work my way into a shuffling run, which would be my pace for the next 20 miles.  I walked the up hills but for the most part kept running, even though the run didn’t really look or feel like what I usually would call “running”.  The weather was perfect at this point, mid 70s with a slight breeze and big poofy clouds that would periodically hide the sun.  Large parts of the run were even shaded.  I heard a woman complain about the humidity at some point and laughed out loud and wanted to explain about real humidity.  We ran by the ski jumps, the horse jumping arena, and out into the country.  We wound by yet another boulder strewn river where I saw a young girl kayaking lazily and I was incredibly jealous.  The volunteers at the aid stations were cheerful and encouraging.  One even told me I looked like I was doing a casual 5k.  I said, “I am, just a lot of them in a row.”  I passed a guy walking a Clumber spaniel and had to stop and pet it, since it’s the first time I’ve seen a Clumber spaniel in real life.  I saw lots of Springers, Labs, and two Malamutes.  (I saw a woman walking two pot-bellied pigs coming in on the first loop of the bike.)  I saw a big red barn with horses that looked a lot like a puzzle I had put together as a kid.  When I talked to Wayne later, he hadn’t seen any of these things, but then, he was moving a lot faster than I was!  My favorite tri-kit was a light green one worn by a hefty man that said “Big Pistachio.”  Someone had put up a series of signs that said “Your parents are proud of you” then “Your children are proud of you” then “Your friends are proud of you” then “I’m proud of you and I don’t even know you!”  Around mile 20 I started walking a little more often, and my shuffling run became even slower.  There is a steep up hill section as you come into town at mile 24 that I had to walk, even though the crowds were yelling like crazy, but finally I started running again and as I made the right turn to the out and back that would bring me back to the finishing oval I could hear the announcer telling people they were an Ironman and I started to get choked up.  So I ran the rest of it and even managed to pick up to a decent pace as I made the turn around and focused on the lights all the way back along the lake and into the oval.  From then on I had a stupid grin on my face as I was slapping hands and running for the arch, laughing and maybe crying a little bit too.  I heard the words we all dream of: “Kasandra Garner, you are an Ironman!” and laughed because he pronounced it correctly and the guys I train with still say it wrong.  A volunteer let me lean on her over to the finishing pix, then set me in a chair and got me some French fries.  I am telling you, it was one of the most perfect moments of my life and I had to just sit there for a few minutes grinning like an idiot and loving everybody and everything.  Then I saw my parents waving to me and went over and kissed my son, and he said he was hungry and wanted my French fries, and it was back to the real world but the real world was still pretty wonderful.  The next hour was a blur of gathering gear and my Dad (who hates to exercise) volunteering to walk to get my special needs bags even though he had already walked more that day than he usually does in a week, so I knew he was proud of me.  When Bill and I were married he jokingly called himself “Mr. Dr. Garner,” and now he called himself “Mr. Dr. Ironman”, so I knew he was proud, too.

 

My official time is 13:35 but that is misleading.  Remember the thunderstorm I mentioned?  It turned out that they had halted the swim not long after I started the bike so some of the athletes only ended up swimming one loop and had their transitions messed up by having to be boated in or swimming to shore further away from T1.  So for the official results, they have excluded the second lap of the swim and T1.  My real time was more like 14:22 according to my Garmin.  My bike was 7:28 and my run was 5:19, so obviously a lot slower than Beach to Battleship but almost exactly what I expected given the difficulty of the course and my haphazard training this year.  I was proud to represent Fleet Feet Huntsville, and had several people on the bike course see my kit and mention it, including someone from Birmingham and someone who said they knew Dink and Suzanne (both as they were passing me).  I highly recommend Ironman Lake Placid to anyone who values scenery, tradition, and a challenging course over speed.  Only Kona is older than Lake Placid, and it shows in the organization and attitude of the officials and volunteers.  I had a great experience, and I would love to go back to the area sometime to explore it more thoroughly, albeit in a more leisurely manner.  Anybody up for the Wakely Dam 55K?