Ironman Lake Placid
Jonathan Steeves
July 28, 2013
I was confident in my training leading up to Lake Placid this year. My early season problems as usual involved my anxiety in the water which was especially bad at Patriot. I also had some problems with flats at St Croix. Outside of those issues my bike legs and run legs had been solid, for me and right around were I expected.
I had no expectations for this race taking in to account the debacle of IMLP 2012 but I would say my goal was to finish around 11 hours. I was hoping I wouldn’t have the same problems with my stomach that I had last year. We arrived in Lake Placid on Thursday. I don’t have much to report leading up to Sunday morning, it was very uneventful and I followed my race week nutrition as planned. We stayed out in Saranac which was inconvenient as far as traveling back in forth to town but fit in to our budget perfectly which out weighs any inconvenience for me. Of course having most of the team staying right across from the swim start helped.
I actually slept quite well Saturday night waking around 12:30am to have my first Boost and was able to fall right back to sleep. I believe I woke up for the day around 3:30 to eat and get ready to head to town. Breakfast was a banana, a plain bagel with jam and another Boost. I also sipped on water and Gatorade leading up to the swim start.
So on to my favorite thing the swim. I took a non – caffeinated Powerbar gel at about 6:50 hoping I would have been in the water sooner then I was. Believe it or not I did not have any anxiety during the mass swim start in 2012 and got beat up less. Not so this year with the corral start I had a little anxiety it wasn’t terrible and didn’t last long but I did initially have trouble keeping my head down in the water. I believe this was caused by having to wait about 12 minutes till my corral made it in to the water and just stewing in my pre-race jitters. I also felt like I battled more this year trying to stay on the cable. Despite all of this I managed to finish the swim in 1:25:39 which was 4-5 minutes faster then 2012.
On to the bike. My transition was quite slow not sure why but I lost some valuable minutes here. Guess I need to practice my transitions because I also gave up some time in T2. I felt great on the bike. Last year my stomach problems started some where between miles 30 and 40. No stomach problems this year and I was able to nail my nutrition plan and put up a bike split of 5:56:04, which was close to 35 minutes better then last year. I had never during a race or during training rode this course in under six hours or one loop in less then 3 hours. I was very happy when I came off the bike with the opportunity of going sub 11 or close to still a possibility.
The run. Again as I stated above lost too much time in transition. I need to Practice, Practice, Practice my transitions! The run started out good I was hitting the pace I wanted to but then my pace fell off somewhere between miles 18 and 21. I blame this on me getting lazy and not sticking to my nutrition plan. Even though I did not put up the marathon I wanted I still was able to run the whole distance. I finished with a run time of 3:48:13 which was about an hour and 10 minutes faster then last year. My official time was 11:22:56 which was good for an 1:50 PR.
I was happy with my overall race but slightly disappointed that the one discipline that usually doesn’t let me down, the run, did! With the run I was expecting I could have put myself closer to 11 hours. Anyway I left myself with a lot to build on for IMLP 2014, like continuing to work on my swimming and improve on my run nutrition or just sticking to it! In the end I consider myself lucky to be healthy enough to train for and take part in these races.