I peeled myself out of bed around 5:30AM after a night of tossing and turning. I was anxious about the day and I was not even racing. Perhaps I was nervous about the reality of the quest would be undertaking that I was about witness. I was nervous for those that I knew that were racing today like my coach Scott, the acquaintances I had made during the Troy Jacobson IMLP Training Camp and the guys I had met the day before. Even though I would not be racing for another 368 days, the snapshot of the day would stay burned in my memory for every mile that I move from now until then.
My wife and I hopped on our bikes and we made our way down River Road heading to Lake Placid for the start of the race. The street was so calm at this hour of the morning and I tried to imagine what it would be like with 2500 athletes running up and down its length. Riding with clipless pedals and sneakers on is a bit difficult and I almost caught my lace in the crank. I eventually fixed that and my wife kept going thinking she would get a headstart on me. I stopped to take a picture at the meadow near the s-turn. The sun was just coming up and dousing its rays on the meadoww with the ski jumps in the background. I just love this section of River Road. It is my favorite place to run. Hope I feel that way next year? It could become the worst…let’s hope not.
As we got into town, things were bustling. The beach by the swim start was abuzz with people and we were jockeying through them all to drop our bikes off at our friends’ rental house. We locked them up there and started hustling back to the swim start as it was almost 7AM. The pros had already started at 6:45AM and they had the National Anthem right after that. We found an opening on the lake shore right behind the orange special needs bags. I took my shoes off and got in the water with my camera. I took a few pics and then tried to get video of the start. With my nervousness and zooming in on the athletes from so far away the video was extremely shaky.
The PA announcer was spewing numerous facts about the race and those competing that day. I think I heard him say there were around 700-800 first-timers. Eventually they fired up “Beautiful Day” by U2 on the loudspeaker and the canon blast echoed across the sky. I have to say my stomach was up in my throat at that point. It is a pretty powerful scene. The chartreuse and fluorescent pink caps oozed out across the lake like a gelatin liquid. There were the hardcore swimmers hugging the lane close to the 4ft rope that runs beneath the surface. Then there were those a little more cautious flanking far our to the side closest to the shore.
As the age-groupers passed by my location the pros were already coming in the other side for their first lap. Andy Potts was leading the bunch by an enormous amount. He came out and heading back in again doing the butterfly for a few yards and back out for the 2nd lap. He is an amazing swimmer. He ended up beating the course record that day with a time of 45:01. That is a little longer than it takes me to do 1.2 miles! My stomach was starting grumble, so we headed over to the Breakfast Club for breakfast again. there was a bit of a wait today and we ended up missing most of the swimmers coming out. We were able to catch a few of the final ones out of the water and witness the wetsuit strippers. After that we headed over and saw some others going out on the bike.
The Pros started coming in from their first 56 mile loop as we headed over to our friend Kathy’s house on Mirror Lake Drive. I got a few shots of them flying by. We hung out with Kathy and the crew watching the bikes come in and the two guys staying there come in. I saw my coach come in but he was past before I realized it was him. We then headed over to the Cowboy on our bikes and had some lunch. They have a killer portabella black bean burger! After lunch we made our way back to the house to get ready for our volunteer duty at Run Station #4 on River Road. Navigating our bikes back along the race course was no easy feat. There wasn’t much room for bikes along with the spectators, so we basically had to ride on the run course. There was one race marshal in one of those John Deere heavy duty golf cart things driving up and down and he was giving some other bikers a raft of crap. I managed to slip by him somehow. Going down River Road was also a bit tough until we figured things out. As we got to the road another marshal asked where we were going and we told him we were volunteers, so he said ok. We were trying to stay on the shoulder of the road, but it seemed all the athletes were going there too. We eventually caught on and went down the middle of the road and it went much smoother then.
We passed our aid station and saw several people dressed up. No one had any Bubba-teeth from what I could see. When we got back to the house we still had a few hours to kill, so we sat out on the side of the road watching the athletes. I saw the Kathy’s brother Steve go by and Coach Scott swung by for a high five. I had switch lenses on my camera when I got back and I forgot to check the auto-focus switch on the lens which was set to manual. So needless to say most of the pictures I took there were out of focus. Lesson learned there. There was one guy that had stopped across the street with severe cramping in his calves. Another girl racing was helping him walk. The father of the couple we stay with ran out and help him work out the cramps. They also mixed up a Shaklee shake of some sort for him and he drank that down. He eventually got going again. The father told me later that he came by the 2nd time looking like a million dollars and thanking them profusely for helping him out. He finished the race. That’s a little “trail magic” if I ever saw it.
After a while we packed up our chairs, got our redneck attire on and headed down to the Aid Station. Our hosts were cracking up and some of the athletes were as well as we made our way the half mile to the aid station. Once at our aid station we were immediately put to work picking up trash. The cups were fine, but the sponges and the leftover orange peels were a bit gross. After catching up with the garbage and other volunteers had completed their shift we were moved into the Coca-Cola and pretzel station. Actually my wife was there first and once she was left by herself she yelled to me to help her out. This actually worked better since the athletes could actually see my teeth now as opposed to bent over picking trash. It was really nice to be able to put a smile on some of their faces while they were in such a state. Hopefully it helped them get to that finish line. As time went on, my wife moved to the food table(banana, oranges, chips, and gu as I heard her say a million times) and I was left alone to fend for myself at the Coke and pretzel table. Fortunately the athletes thinned out a bit as time went on. I got to see several of the people I met at the Troy Jacobson Camp which was cool to see them finishing.
The sun eventually went down and the lights and generators were fired up. With that came the mosquitos! We combined some of the tables and moved away from the lights which helped. I shift ended at 9PM but we stayed until 9:45PM since they were very short-handed. It was a good experience volunteering. Most of the athletes are so thankful and I heard so many “Thank You” ‘s during that time. It is a really nice feeling to give back a bit. I also saw several people in a bad state which hopefully sticks with me for next year. This made me realize that I must eat, hydrate and take it easy on that bike!
We had thought maybe we would head up to the speed-skating oval to see the final finishers, but at this point we were pretty tired. I needed to get up early again the next day to stand in the volunteer line for next year’s registration, so I really needed a good night sleep. I had heard that the last couple hours of the race are pretty amazing. I guess I will have to save that for next year. Hopefully I will have a front row seat for that!
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