Ironman Lake Placid- Preshow

I have not blogged since January.  Actually I have but, I never posted them.  We just arrived home after a long ass drive home from New York.  A wonderful slap in the face to an already bad weekend.  Where do I start?  How about where I left off in January.  So much has happened in the last 6 months and every bit of it came into play while racing IMLP.  If you are reading this I'm sure you are wondering why it went down the way it did.  I had a long 5 hr walk on Sunday to mull it over.  So here it goes...

It was a Thursday afternoon I think when I got the call from HR at Savannah River Site offering me the next stage of my life.  Training up to this point was going well.  I was swimming and running a lot while peppering in a few trainer rides. I accepted the job down south and so began the whirlwind of uprooting my family and depleting every resource I had.  Before I go on I need to make this very clear, I do not regret for one second my decision to move here.  I love my job, my new house, and this heat.  We have a horse barn and a small pasture.  I couldn't ask for anything more.  Well that being said, moving is hard.  I came down by myself for a month in the beginning.  That alone had it's own challenges.  My swim routine was erased.  The pool down here is not what the brochure said.  Turns out they open at 6a (I leave for work at 5) and it's apparent that the local swim team rules that place from 3p-close.  I tried swimming at the Y and that was an experience for a different blog!  Basically I dropped down to 1-2 open water swims a week of no more than 2 miles.  That's ok right?  I can swim.  On my worst day I'll still be one of the first ones out.  I should just run more, 2 minutes lost in the swim is nothing compared to the 45 minutes I could gain on the run...Well that's wrong.  And I'll come back to that.  So now the family moves down and we buy a house.   An awesome house that sat vacant or a year and had all original carpet from the 80's.  With a severely allergenic son I decided to rip all the flooring out the day I got the keys.  Made perfect logistical sense.  If I wasn't training for an Ironman.  Here is when things started to really get of track.  I am now working 10 hrs a day, remodeling a home for 3 hrs a day, and training for 2 hrs a day.  I discovered real quick that laying floors is the same as doing like 200 squats a night.  I never recovered.  I was putting in the miles but, I just wasn't hitting the key workouts.  All endurance no speed.   

Now it's May.  The week before Triple T I went to Vegas for a wedding.  I literally drank for 3 days straight with less than 4 hrs of sleep.  If you know me you know that when I'm off the wagon I am OFF the wagon!  I rolled through TTT with a somewhat respectable showing.  Now here's the catch.  I came home and it took me almost 3 weeks to recover.  All the while I'm working and fixing up the house.  During this whole transition period I had real issues with sleep too.  I was getting maybe 3 hrs a night of solid sleep. Hopefully that's over. (doubt it).   Last note...I am still not swimming much.  1:12's were hard to maintain.

On to June.  I got a letter back from Tulane University.  I was not accepted into their Masters program.  I spoke with my boss, I needed to get my Masters and certification in Industrial Hygiene ASAP.  The person I was hired to help is now now retiring in 2 weeks.  There was only 2 of us in the facility.  (By the way my job is to basically identify potential health hazards for people trying to mitigate nuclear waste from the cold war.)  Life just got a little tougher.  Mid June I went up to Morgantown to race another half.  The race went OK but, I realized something about 6 miles into the run.  I was tired.  Something was wrong but, I figured I'd still pull it off.  Maybe I forgot to mention that I still have a house in Ohio that I'm paying a mortgage on.  I also didn't mention that it was broke into and all the copper pipe was ripped out.  That's ok.  I'm still training for an Ironman.

July 4th weekend I went like I was supposed to.  Problem is that I was overcome by a little heat stress on My last long bike.  I never really got to hold the pace I needed for 130 miles. I began my taper and was so relieved that I could finally relax that maybe I relaxed too much.  I did the same plan I did in 2009 but, this time it didn't work.  I never hit it. 

We decided to drive up to NY the Thursday before the race.  On the way quite a bombshell was dropped.  Our homeowners insurance was dropped in  Ohio because we were not fully occupying the house.  Now the mortgage company was going to penalize us 4x the amount we were paying per month.  Note:  My wife is not working yet.  I know I did this to myself.  Secondly, my realtor in Ohio has dropped the ball and told the person making an offer on our house how bad we needed to sell.  Now they counter offer 7k less than their original offer.  WTF.  That sucks because we can't even afford to close on the house now.  In the meantime my legs are sore and I gained 6 lbs since 4th of July.  I wasn't feeling it. 

We arrive in Placid and I have one goal.  Get registered and rest.  Turned out I was on my feet until 3:30 pm on Saturday.  Nobodies fault but, my own.  I didn't plan my day properly. 

I know it looks like I am making excuses.  I am not.  The next blog will summarize the race.  That 3rd blog will tie it all together and it will all make sense.  I know what went wrong and now I have to admit it.  I know my friends well and I know all the speculating that's going on.  

Race day....next blog.