96 Days to Ultraman Mexico: Ironman Lake Placid Race Week

Ironman Lake Placid race week.

Seven days to go. Normally, at this point I’d be half way through a taper. Focusing on staying loose and maximizing recovery. Fitness gains this close to race day are minimal. The law of diminishing returns is in full affect. The most highest impact action I can take is resting to capture the fitness I’ve already built in training.

Having a Ultraman on the books changes everything. So this week I’m trying something different. Lake Placid is lower priority in the context of my season.

(That is a sentence I could not have imagined writing seriously even six months ago.)

I did this race last year: my first Ironman and first triathlon beyond Olympic distance. I was stressed. While I trust my ability to gut it out, I was full of doubt I could finish in time. I just had to be fast enough to make each of the cutoffs. The week before the race, I was sleeping in a tent and working ten-hour days on the Pacific Crest Trail. My final assignment of the trail building season.

Getting to the race meant an overnight flight from Reno to Hartford, followed by a six-hour drive to upstate New York. I arrived at 1 a.m. Friday; race check-in was that same morning. From Thursday night to race start, I totaled maybe ten hours of sleep. Race morning there was nothing left for me to do but focus on taking it one step at a time. The first step was into Mirror Lake.

An Ironman always feels like a big day. My first Ironman was reason enough to be nervous, but this was even bigger. This was the grand finale of a 110 day adventure over a year in the making. I’d left home in April, backpacked across the country by train, and lived in Nevada for a season of trail work. There was no time to go home before the race. I had 140.6 miles left, and that was it.

Now, my focus is different. I’m back at Lake Placid to set a personal best, knowing a much bigger race looms ahead. In this context, I’m treating it more as a high volume training session than a peak race. I don’t take it for granted. I’ve only finished this distance twice, and it’s still far from guaranteed. This week, I’ll see how my body handles Ironman distance with a more structured approach, essentially using it as a peak week leading up to race day. After Sunday, I’ll take a week to transition and recover before ramping back into high volume for the USA Triathlon Olympic Distance National Championships in Milwaukee.