Yesterday’s post mentioned my ankle injury (from a bike crash on 7/13). A “mild” ankle sprain should be better after one to two weeks so when I still had significant pain on day 12 I made an appointment to get it evaluated at the orthopedics urgent care. Of course by this morning (day 14) it felt so much better that after 90 minutes on the bike trainer, I tried to see if I could run on the treadmill. I mainly wanted to be able to tell them at the appointment whether I could run. I started with a fast walk, then an easy jog, and up to my normal running pace. I felt mild pain in my medial malleolus but no instability and the pain didn’t seem to get worse no matter how fast I ran. I told Alex that even though the ankle felt almost normal I would NOT cancel my appointment because then I would likely have a relapse in a few days and regret it. Excelsior Ortho was super efficient and I was quickly checked in and put in an exam room. I took off my shoe and sock but a minute later I was being led off for x-rays. I assumed they would examine me first. I only had a few minutes to wait back in the exam room before a pleasant young PA came in, got a history from me, and then thoroughly examined my foot and lower leg. After confirming that my only pain was on the medial malleolus he showed me the X-ray result on his iPad. (notations added by me).
Luckily the fracture was not displaced and was healing despite all the weight bearing I had done in the past two weeks (including walking 30,000 steps while volunteering at race day of Ironman Lake Placid). The PA said it was usually around 6 weeks for this type of fracture to heal so only 4 more to go! I was given a minimal ankle brace that fits inside a shoe and will continue to keep it elevated whenever possible but will keep biking and swimming. After the appointment, I wandered around the Glen Park Art Festival with Alex and the brace really made it pain-free.
Friday, July 19th I was signed up to volunteer at Ironman registration from 8:45 to 12:45, there had also been an email sent requesting volunteers to help mix the electrolyte powder into water bottles for the bike course (they needed 3000 bottles). I got the earliest start I could manage and parked in the municipal lot in the center of town so I could walk to Mirror Lake for a swim and then back to the van to change clothes and walk to the Olympic Convention Center by 8:45.
I didn’t get on the road until after 6 and it was 6:54 when I started my swim. I wanted to be back at the parking lot around 8 as that is when the parking payment app would start working. There were several dozen athletes out doing practice swims versus the few two days earlier. Most of them did not do the whole course though so it was only at the south end of the lake that there was much traffic. Since I only had an hour to swim I went very hard the whole time. 1:42 per 100 yards was definitely my fastest swim ever for an hour. It felt cool to be passing so many swimmers even though I knew that they were taking it easy this close to race day.
This year is the 25th Anniversary of Ironman Lake Placid. It was the first Ironman race to take place in North America in 1999 (from 1978 to 1998 the Ironman was only in Hawaii, then in 1999 there was Lake Placid and Austria, and soon dozens worldwide each year).
There was definitely extra excitement this year and Ironman seemed to make extra efforts to make the event special (including have Mike Reilly come out of retirement to announce “You are an Ironman” for each finisher).
I ordered his book recently. I got to stand on stage and shake his hand in 2016 when I did my first Ironman at Lake Placid and the Buffalo Triathlon Club won a club award.
For the last few years Lake Placid has had issues with Covid and then construction on the Olympic Center and the street in front of the skating oval/transition area. This year everything was fully back to normal.
This year they had a giant adirondock chair for us Volunteers as well as one for the racers. There were 2000 volunteers and almost 2500 racers (a record) including over 100 professionals. This year both Men and Women pros would be racing; some years only one or the other or even none depending on the Pro tour schedule.
I helped with registration two years ago so it was easy to get up to speed on the iPad process. It was even easier this year, it only required scanning the athlete’s QR code from their phones or paper and then scanning the QR code of a race packet. The hardest part for me was writing the number on the swim caps with a Sharpie! There were a LOT of people from Quebec as there is no more Ironman Mt. Tremblant and the 2 hour drive to Lake Placid was very attractive versus getting to Ironman Wisconsin or Maryland. Next year there will be an Ironman Ottawa for the first time so there will probably be fewer Quebecois in Lake Placid. I enjoyed chatting with the athletes about their hometowns and providing answers to questions (having raced and volunteered at LP I had most of the answers but if not there was a “solutions” desk we could refer people to). The registration volunteers were mostly a group of people I had met before. They all come up from Georgia every year just to volunteer. They also do the Saturday pancake breakfast and the finisher food on Sunday.
Luckily this did NOT affect the Ironman software but there were many athletes whose flights on Friday were delayed by many hours. One of my friend’s flight from Florida was delayed 6 hours! Fortunately this year for the first time there was a two-hour registration period on Saturday morning so the late arrivals did not have to get any special help.
I was VERY disappointed to not get to register this athlete! Lake Placid is VERY dog friendly, I saw them in many shops, and restaurants, swimming in the lake and they were even allowed on the shuttle buses on race day.
The volunteer next to me was registering someone who said that he had pre-requested to be #2112 and then I noticed that he was “attached” to a woman. At first, I thought that maybe he was a “mentally challenged” athlete but then as we discussed Rush he seemed intelligent and I noticed he was wearing a yamulka. I told him that I had recently read the memoir of Rush bassist Geddy Lee. He immediately showed me a photo of him at a book signing with Geddy. He then showed me the outfit he always raced in. I asked what the deal was with the leash between them and his wife said that she sometimes “wandered off” when excited so this way it wouldn’t happen. I didn’t realize she was racing also so I asked what she would do during the 15 hours of the race. Would he tie her to a tree and leave her a bottle of water? I have a friend who is a short story writer (Kim…) and want to show her these photos and see if she can write a story.
I left registration a little early to drive to the bike bottle preparation site at the Horsegrounds. I took my volunteer bagged lunch to go.
Until this year, Gatorade Endurance was the beverage on the bike and run courses. This year Ironman switched to Mortal Hydration which is NOT sold in bottles (only as powder) so volunteers needed to take pallets of water bottles and add the powder. Besides not being available in bottles and the powder ONLY being available as single serving packets, Mortal was a very poor choice for Ironman-length races as it has only 40 calories per bottle and is sweetened with Stevia.
I was glad the flavor was Mango as it didn’t stain my clothes like the berry flavor would have. Although they had thought this task would go past 2 it was done by 1 so I was glad to have an afternoon to rest. I parked the car on the way back into town to get a photo of this amazing display in someone’s yard along the run course. I imagine their Halloween decorations are over the top.
I was back at the campground before 3pm and then elevated and iced my ankle and “started” to blog but barely managed to organize all my GoPro and DashCam photos. As it was hot out I just napped inside with the A/C running rather than opening the top. I went to dinner at the brewpub across the street with my Facebook friend Maud and her partner Francois. They were from Quebec and it was to be Maud’s first Ironman attempt after just one or two 70.3s (half-Ironman distance races). They were camping near me as I had recommended the Meadowbrook site last year to them. They had been at Lake Placid in May camping as well so Maud could practice the course.
Francois had for many years been on the Canadian Dragon Boat racing team and traveled the world for meets. He is transitioning back to triathlons soon I think.
I had a nice view of the sky from my site and the moon would be a Full Buck Moon on race night. I didn’t get any good star photos at night because of the moon being so bright.