July 29, 2009! thats the date of Ironman Lake placid and this is my goal race for the Shad Ireland foundation!
Lake placid is a great place and they run a wonderful race. its a two loop swim, two loop bike and a two loop run so it make for a great race for the spectators!
Lake placid is where this all started for me. Three years ago I visited with a group of friends training for ironman lake placid ( I was hoping to finish a 1/2 iron distance duathelon) and fell in love with the place and that were I decided I wanted to be an Ironman! its such a great historic place, where else can you become an ironman running in an Olympic stadum?!
How did I get here?
3 years ago after my second baby I wanted to get active, so I started to run, its not my most favorite thing to do, even today I’d rather bike or swim, but it was a great way to get in shape and the running room offers a great community of runners to join. During my second 1/2 marathon clinic a local trainer came in and talked about cross training, she was also an iron man, I was interested and went and tried a class. It was fun. While at the class I met this group who were training for Ironman Lake Placid, I was intimidated but at the same time interested. They were a great group- very friendly, and today I still train with them all , they are my ironman family! I cant say enough about how much they help me ( with training, my bike, emotional support and just being out there on those long training days) People often say you are crazy how can you do this, but when you are out with a great group of friends its never seems that bad!
Anyway, I decided that I would try this multisport thing, so I bought a bike and signed up for a 1/2 iron distance duathelon, instead of swiming you run, then bike then run again. September of 2006 I completed by first du and loved it, but it wasnt a tri and it wasnt an offical ironman, to do that I needed to learn how to swim. I heard about this coach Paul Johnston, his company is called Iron motovation, he offered tri specific swim classes, so I joined! Paul taught me how to swim, I had never had any formal training, when I started with him I didnt know what the front crawl was and couldn’t swim 1 lenght of the pool! Thank goodness Paul knew what he was doing and the next summer I completed a 1/2 iron distance tri! But it wasnt ironman.
Then an opportunity came up. Some of my tri friends had decided they were going to travel out to Petiction to sign up for Ironman Canada 2008. Ironman Canada is the oldest ironman race in north america (26 yrs this year) and sells out every year, the only method of registration is being there in person. We flew out there. We also send out our bikes and checked out the course , swam and signed up!
This summer while training, we again visited lake placid, we volunteered for the race and we signed up! So here we go, next stop lake placid!
