No this is not the second blog of a two part blog. It is the first blog of what will be the beginning of my second journey to Ironman Lake Placid. This past weekend I went to Lake Placid to watch the Ironman and to volunteer. Having only participated in an Ironman it was a great to see it from the other side, the spectator side. Watching something like Ironman doesn’t really come that easy for me, I kept thinking that I wished I was out their competing. I’ve worked hard all winter and spring and I know that I’m in better shape now then when I did Lake Placid in 2011. I enjoyed going out and training on the course, even though we only did 1 loop of each event, I felt good being out there.
This time Ironman will be different for me, the goals are different. The last time it was about finishing and pacing myself conservatively, make sure to get to the finish line! This time though, I want to race. I want to push myself and see just how fast I can go at Ironman. Can I go under 12 hours? under 11 hours? How fast can I run a marathon after biking 112 miles? Can I bike the course at 20mph? All those questions will be running through my head over and over during the course of the next year.
The answers to some of those questions will become more clear after I run my first marathon this fall. If I’m able to run a 3:10-3:15 marathon, I should be able to train and build on that fitness enough to reasonably set running a 3:30 marathon at Ironman as possible. Similary my biking has improved dramatically from last year, it is rare now that I bike under 20mph on rides and that includes rides over 60 miles. That is something I couldn’t come close to doing in 2011. Another good winter of hard training on the CompuTrainer and I feel like riding the Ironman course in 5:45 or 6 hours is another reasonable goal. Riding just half the course this past weekend I felt like I was close to that already. To achieve that bike goal though I will have to spend more time on hilly courses, that is going to mean heading to NY more often to visit my parents and climbing the mountains around the reservoirs or heading up into NH on the long rides. It will mean taking on Peekamoose mountain again, a climb that is much harder than any on the Ironman course. It will mean riding around the Pepacton reservoir with climbs that are as steep as the climb from Jay to Wilmington, but longer. It will mean lots of time on the bike.
The last time I signed up I can remember thinking to myself, “what the hell did I just do?”. This time I’m well aware of what I did and I’m looking forward to the challenge.