Lake Placid

I'm telling you, Memorial weekend could NOT come fast enough and boy oh boy was it worth the wait! Heaven, pure training heaven is what I had. Me and my friends rented a house for the weekend it was a total of 5 adults, 1 baby and 2 dogs. We took the 6hour drive up to Placid on Friday morning, very easy, straight run. The reason we went up to Placid was because it was a training vacation getaway. It's a great place for triathletes to train, a bunch of teammates from our local tri group were training up there and most importantly it's where Ironman is held. You know the one. Ironman Lake Placid July 2011. The race of my dreams. The reason I'm doing everything I'm doing. I wanted to check the course out. See if those hills were as hard as I've heard :).

We get up there Friday don't even unpack and I'm already getting my wetsuit so I can go swim in the lake with my other teammates. I was so scared the water temp was going to be like 40 degrees, but I was prepared, I had my neoprene cap so I was good to go. I only wound up swimming for 20 minutes. Of course it was the worst part of the swim because it was more or less a warm up and I felt like I didn't even know how to swim. But I loved the water, and the temp was 60 degrees if not a little bit warmer. The PERFECT temperature! We came back to the house and I felt like a queen. We had fan-freaking-tastic home cooked meals the entire weekend! Sigh :). Dinners were grilled steak and salmon, salads, couscous, grilled veggies. Dessert was ice cream every night. mmmmm deeeeeelish.

Saturday I woke up, went for a run down to the Olympic ski lift and back which was a total of 4.70 miles. I decided to run up this wall of a hill that's straight up and leads to our house. Driving up it I was scared, running up it my pace was 17min mile. I'm sure that's considered walking lol. Point is I did it and it was hard. Got home took a quick shower and got ready for a bike ride. I'm sure you're probably asking WHY would I take a shower if I was just going to go sweat some more...well as soon as I stopped moving it LOOKED like I had taken a shower. It was so hot. Anyway we set off on the road, me and Blake. I warned him I was slow especially on the hills. The first 8 miles was harder than I thought. I was literally going 5mph on some of the climbs. I felt like I was dying (ok not really but you get my drift). I was telling Blake that it was really hard and he said "don't worry we'll catch a break". Well he was right. I started to see the signs that said low gear with a truck on an angle. A clear indication we were going downhill. Oh how I loved that downhill; 7-8miles of downhill, I was flying. Its not easy going downhill for miles on end it takes a toll on your body. You get sore. I was flat backed, low over the handlebars, knees against the bar, pushed back in my seat. There were lots of turns and you had to ride in the road rather than off to the side because there were lots of cracks in the pavement. I was using my breaks a little and I went a max of 41mph. It was crazy! My arms were killing me afterwards. After that break of downhill soaring we keep going and turn onto Route 9N this has some flats or maybe these were the false flats I kept hearing about. In either case it didn't seem that bad. Then dun dun dun dun we turn onto Route 86 17miles til Lake Placid. OMG 86 is where it gets hard, because its constant hills you feel like you never get a break. As soon as I got onto 86 I was riding 5-8mph again. I couldn't understand why it felt so hard. I thought it should have felt easier than what it was. I mean that's the way it looked. I got to a point where I was thinking of stopping. But I kept going. I started wondering if I missed the baby & mama bear climbs I had heard of. But no they were there. They aren't as bad as you imagine and once you get over them it's a downhill into Placid :). It was good to be back home...well almost. I had to climb that wall of a hill to get to the house. Oh lord. So I stuck to my granny gears and went for it. You don't completely understand the meaning of a hard hill until you climb that. Blake and I got to the highest point and then had to pull over. I was so out of breath and then I couldn't stop laughing. I think I had a bout of hysteria. All I kept on saying was "I can't believe we just did that, I can't believe we just climbed that hill. OMG I can't stop laughing". It was hysteria. Seriously. We were done after that. So we walked to the house. We couldn't get back on our bikes.

It was a hard but GOOD day followed by a BBQ across the lake at the team houses. I was so exhausted that night.

Sunday was an easier day. Woke up had a great big breakfast of eggs, pancakes, fruit and coffee. Then I needed another nap (hey what can I say it's a lot of work to eat hehe). Everybody met up to swim at 4pm. I wasn't convinced I'd do the whole out and back which was a total of 1.5miles. Thanks to my good friend Ryan I was able to pull it off. When I was putting my wetsuit on I decided to try it with a GU in my sleeve, for practice and for peace of mind. My blood sugar was in the 300's (the entire wknd I was yo-yoing) when I started so I gave a 1.5unit correction and I had a temp basal of 50% for 1.5hrs. Ryan kinda had to convince me to keep going cuz I was scared about not being able to make it back. But she told me to just slow down and take it easy - no rush. So we did. I was able to catch a rhythm, and we would check in every 2 buoys, then 3 then 4. When we got to the end Ryan was singing the rocky theme lol. So we head back I was feeling good. But then the yellow line I was following the whole time started to get blurry so I stopped to eat the GU. Very easy to do let me tell you. Continue on and we're checking every 4 buoys then 6. I felt so good when we came out the water! I checked my BG and I was 142. I had dropped 200pts in the water. scary. Next time I won't take so much of a correction and I'll be sure to swim with 2 GU's. Ryan told me while we were in the middle of the lake that I'd be so happy once we finished. Ya know what? She was right. I've never swum that far. I was so proud of us.

Monday I went for a 42miler with Ryan. I felt much better this time around on the bike course but I think I was still just as slow. Good thing about the ride was that I changed the setting on my Garmin to tell me what the grade % was. So when I mentioned it was hard...it really WAS hard. The grades were like 6-8% on average, thankfully they didn't last more than 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile. Route 86...yeah guess what that was...12% grade!!!! Oh the satisfaction. I felt so completely justified in going 5mph. lol Oh yeah and you know what else I did? That wall of a hill I had to climb to get back to the house? Yeah I did it again and I rode it all the way up to the front door of the house. Guess what the % was. You're not even gonna be able to guess it...20% at the highest point then it leveled off at 12%!!! Oh the sweet satisfaction. I felt beat after that.

We thankfully had a huge meal to eat then we were on the road for 6 hours back to the city. Training heaven is what Lake Placid is. My blood sugars were all over the place, my training was crazy hard but it was all a learning time. Right now I can't imagine doing the bike course 2x but that's what this next year is for. To train. To build my confidence. To learn. To become better.

It's gonna be crazy fun! I know it was a long write up so if you made it this far thank you for reading. I truly appreciate your support.