For many, Ironman USA in Lake Placid begins 12 months earlier when racers, volunteers and spectators wait in lines of varying lengths in what used to be the Olympic Village to obtain a voucher, a golden ticket, entitling them to register for the following year’s race. In Lake Placid on Ironman weekend, silver wristbands and vouchers separate the entitled from the envious.

On that same morning in 2007, sitting in my office in Midtown Manhattan, I was one of the very few who were able to register without the assistance of a golden ticket, helped by an online Active.com registration system that was plagued with glitches, just enough to delay the opening of online registration and making the exact start time somewhat suspect and elusive. During the confusion, I found a more direct hyperlink to the registration site, had all of my data ready to go, and sat at my desk on conference calls while consistently clicking refresh, refresh, refresh on my keyboard. I speculated correctly that the registration would open up a few minutes before the revised stated time, which it did by about seven minutes. And so I was in, a registered and committed member of a selective group of those who began their experience by sticking an entry into their Outlook calendar like a commitment signed in electronic blood from our pricked and still twitching fingers. I was registered for Ironman USA in Lake Placid on July 20th, 2008.

At the time, I was feeling pretty darn good about myself. I had just run a sub 1:25 half marathon, My Half Ironman bike time on a hilly course was under 3 hours, my weight was slightly under 180lbs and I had successfully trained for and did quite well at the Tupper Lake Tinman Half Ironman just a few weeks before.

What happened between then and now can be clearly seen via the race actuals on the right hand sidebar of my blog, but suffice it to say that things went awry. For those who aren’t regular readers of my blog, the short recap is as follows:

• August - November 2007: Training on track, cautiously optimistic
• November-December 2007: Loss of family member
• February 2008 - April 2008: Viral illness
• April 2008: Training resumes
• May 2008: Illness returns
• June 1st 2008: Black Bear Triathlon - Could not generate enough power to get around the bike course without getting off and walking and DNF’d before the run.

Which brings us to late June 2008 and what for many is the beginning of Ironman Lake Placid month. It begins with the Tupper Lake Tinman Half Ironman distance race. In short, after crashing heavily at Black Bear four weeks earlier, I didn’t know what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised that at Tupper Lake I accomplished all of my goals. I completed the swim, completed the bike and completed the run. I finished the race, not in style and not in any great time, but given where I was, I felt very pleased and encouraged by this result. That said, the lingering illness was still apparently wreaking havoc on my physiological systems as evidenced by the fact that I found myself during the run shuffling along at a 12:00 min/mile pace with a heart rate at 172 beats per minute. To put this into perspective, 170 beats per minute is reflective of my lactate threshold effort and the same heart rate at which one year earlier I was running 7 min/miles in the NYC Half Marathon. At Tupper, my primary goals was to finish the race and I knew that there was no way that I was going to do that by running at effort levels exceeding my LT. Dutifully, I reduced my pace to about 12:30 min/mile to keep my effort level below that 170 marker and continued to shuffle along taking walk breaks whenever my heart rate exceeded that marker.

Now let’s be honest, it’s hard to shuffle along at that pace. People that regularly run at a twelve to fourteen minutes per mile pace have my utmost respect if only because they take so many extra steps and are out there on hot courses for so much longer. At Tupper Lake, I was one of them. Race with Purpose Wonder Twins, Joshquatch and Holistic Guru made my day and the day for others by coming back out after the Sprint triathlon to run with the rest of us that were still out there on the Half Ironman course. In the end, I finished with a bike split of 3:25 (16.3mph) keeping my average heart rate at 142 bpm, and a run time of 2:49 (12:54), with an average heart rate of 160 bpm. This was the data that I looked at as I considered revising my objectives for Ironman Lake Placid scheduled for just three weeks later.

For the best trained athletes, Ironman is not to be taken lightly. A 2.4-mile swim, a significantly more challenging 112-mile bike course and a marathon for the run make IMLP a race that is to be treated with serious respect. Given that I was still having trouble running 5 miles around my house without having to stop to catch my breath, I new I’d have to revise both my expectations and objectives for this event. The one thing I really wanted to do on Tupper Lake weekend was to ride at least one loop of the IMLP bike course the day after the race, but I was simply too beat up to do it. So at this point, I still didn’t know if I could push my carcass around the bike course on race day. All I had to go on was a 3:35 Half Iron bike time.

After some contemplation, I decided to participate in IMLP but to limit my participation to completing the 2.4-mile swim and one 56-mile loop of the bike course. My key goal was to complete both before the 1:30pm cutoff. I took my 3:25 bike split and the completion of the Tupper Lake Half along with the fact that my ‘91 Ford Explorer had made it to/from both Tupper Lake and Princeton, NJ as positive signs that my objectives for IMLP would be achievable.

To be continued…

The second gunman on the grassy knoll? Maybe? Maybe not. Explore with me the facts of one professional’s humbling experience and come to your own conclusion about whether this group here had anything to do with it.

From left to right are super triathletes and TriScoopers Moonpie (I’m ripped), HolisticGuru (Is there quinoa in this drink?), Strouter (I’m not drunk, I used to be), Rambonie (I’m finding about my nature) and CindyJo (Yes, I have multiples of this grateful dead t-shirt, so back off).

To begin this story, let’s work our way back to July 19th when Desiree herself posted this on her blog:

Good morning everyone! I have been a little tardy with my journaling and I still have all the nasty details in my head from Ironman CDA so I will have to come back to that one….

I am about to go jump in the lake out here in Lake Placid, NY. It is the day before the race and I am optimistic that I will come back from the mistakes I made a few weeks ago and have a solid race. There is some great competition up here this weekend and the hilly course is a feat to conquer in itself. We have thunderstorms for the last two days so hopefully those will hold off for us until the run portion. A rain shower on the run always feels nice.

At that point Desiree was looking like this:

At some point between lunch and dinner our mild mannered TriScoopers were innocently day drinking at Charlie’s, a popular hangout on Main Street in Lake Placid, when in walked Desiree Ficker. According to witnesses, Desiree walked up to the host and asked to obtain food, fuel, sustenance and necessary nutrition for her upcoming race. Before Moonpie could jump up to invite her over to the table, the host had apparently ignored this professional triathlete’s pleas for food (Think Oliver holding his bowl out) and sent her on her way. Where she went, no one seems to know but as you can read from her blog entry above, she was still in a very fragile state of mind and the denial of food only contributed to her performance on race day. How poor was her performance you ask? Here is a quote from Ironman Live:

Desiree Ficker gets across the line
“She hasn’t had much luck at this race, has she. Desiree Ficker isn’t one to quit, though — she walked her way across the line here today, as she did three years ago.

Our spotters just told me that when they saw her she was shaking and her lips were blue at the turnaround.

It obviously wasn’t her day, but she certainly toughed this one out!”

In my mind, this couldn’t be any simpler. Charlie’s is directly responsible for Desiree’s poor performance. At the same time, the host was summarily dismissing her, our TriScoopers were being offered another round of drinks ON THE HOUSE. Why, you ask? Obviously to distract them from helping out this poor athlete.

By favoring the intoxicated TriScoopers over this professional athlete, they virtually guaranteed that Desiree would bonk during the marathon the following day. Did Moonpie bonk? NO! Did CindyJo bonk? NO! In fact, Nathan Miller (not pictured here) beat Desiree by fifteen minutes on the run and he clearly has the means to compensate the owners of Charlie’s to act like they didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know who she was? RIGHT! Please take a look at the picture above and tell me that you wouldn’t remember her face. So the question remains, did Charlie’s act on their own, or was there an outside influence that contributed to this unconscionable act?

I’m not saying that there was a conspiracy here but I think that the truth needs to come out. Desiree needs to be vindicated and at the least Charlie’s owes Desiree a pitcher of margueritas on the house.

You won’t be able to open any of your favorite blogs without seeing something about this weekend’s triathlon happenings. From death and jellyfish at the NYC Tri to the torrential downpours at IMLP, this was definitely a tri-weekend to remember in all of it’s glory, regret, elation and challenges. Here are a few things that I’ll throw up there that I thought about on my drive back to Westchester today, in no particular order:

• There really are tri-stalkers out there; keep this in mind before dating another triathlete that you may not spend the rest of your life with.
• You can drive from Albany all the way into Lake Placid with only 2nd and 4th gears.
• On race morning, I will wake up at 3:30am without an alarm.
• Quinoa porridge is best made in the dark while wearing headlamps.
• While wearing headlamps, etiquette suggests not looking directly at the person to whom you are talking, unless you want to blind them.
• Farrah or any of Farrah’s friends are not to be messed with unless you want to be publicly embarrassed in front of a national audience.
• It’s Bill, it’s wrapped in plastic; I’m not doing it.
• I’m not drunk, I used to be.
• Desiree Ficker got kicked out of a restaurant while Moonpie, CindyJo, Strouter, Rambonie and Guru were offered a round of drinks on the house.
• If you are going to flat with tubulars, do it in Jay in front of a house rented by eight triathlon coaches.
• Fix-a-flat for bike tires will get you about 4 more miles.
• Sherpas need sherpa stylists, given that while the athletes had two transitions and two special needs, the sherpas came back to the love shack four to five separate times.
• Laptops do not like to drink white wine.
• Mile 40 is a great place to begin puking on the bike.
• Jenwilltri must have been going crazy not being up in LP this weekend.
• Texting in the rain is a recipe for electronic failure.
• Apparently a floor in the men’s changing tent would have not been realistic enough, so mud wrestling was introduced as the fourth discipline in the sport.
• Rambo took over North America Sports and fired people during his volunteer post.
• You really can feel pouring rain while you are swimming, but only until you are kicked in the face.
• By the time you reach Ironman, you need to be able to a) swim in a straight line, and b) not have to breast stroke and c) not have to stand vertical to sight causing the swimmer behind your to swim up into your now raising heels.
• Phil never made it to the love shack, but we did leave the light on for him.
• Wearing a USC Trojan rain slicker attracts HACs.
• Many elite athletes leave their bikes in the transition area until the following morning.
• The Ironman cutoffs assume that you can swim the loop in two hours and do both loops of the bike in less than four hours each. Therefore, if you suck on the bike, you’d better get out of the water in under an hour.
• Bring two pairs of boxer shorts to an Ironman weekend.
• If there are tri-panties in the sleeves of my clean shirts, they are not mine.
• Javier, Rambonie, TriBoomer, Nathan, Kristine and the Goose all have vouchers for IM2009.
• Strouter, Jenwilltri, Michelle, ???, ???, ??? will all be looking at 2010 to make their Ironman debut.
• and lastly, peelers is just a glorified term for strippers and North America Sports could reduce the athlete fee by simply auctioning off the right to do this job. Why? Because Ironman weekend is like summer camp for adults. Maybe Race with Purpose should put together the first ever wetsuit peeler training class.

Well that’s about it for now. I’ll come back with more fun stuff. In the meanwhile check out the blogs from other members of our party in the right-hand navigator, except for Strouter’s because she’s still waiting for her laptop to dry out.