Had My First Ironman Lake Placid Nightmare

No idea why, but I had my first Lake Placid nightmare last night. By the time I hit T1 (or did I even make it to T1?), I think I was about 3 hours into the race. OUCH!

Basically everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Even the format for the race went bonkers! Just follow along here:

I think I showed up early to the race, but before I knew it, I was 30 mins late. They gave us these wristbands (not the usual paper ones) that had a countdown timer on it, starting at 17 hours. I remember getting into the water at 16:30. I guess it didn't matter when you started, as long as you finished within the 17 hour mark. There were no cutoff times?

Well the swim was bananas. Because I was running late, I had to park my car on the side of the road on the other side of Mirror Lake and hop in and get started. Except I wasn't the only one not starting at the official swim start. Below is the direction of how everyone was swimming (the purple arrows):

So EVERYONE was swimming from the outside in towards this island that is now in the middle of Mirror Lake. Get that? There is an island in the middle of Mirror Lake? AND! NOBODY was following the course. For some reason there was this rule that stated as long as you get in a 2.4 mile swim or longer, you can continue. I had a GPS watch that somehow worked in the water.

I remember I had this watch because I swam from my starting point to the island, looked at my watch that said I had already swam 2.35 miles in 1:35:XX. Holy crap I was slow! So I walked across the island, jumped back in and swam to the swim start.

Its a dream, I know....

Now for transition to the bike.

Well, T1 was not at the swim exit, it was on the other side of the lake. So they bussed you over to T1. Remember this is a dream?

I got to my bike and realized that I had no Chocolate Gu for the bike. So I decided to run back to my car because that is where my Gu was, then run back to T1 and get on my bike and off we go. Except by this time I was already 3 hours into the race and just starting the bike.

I forced myself to wake up because my brain just HURT.

I think this dream was spawned from the fact that my worst fear is being late for a race, I hate bonking on the bike, I am wanting to head up to Lake Placid this fall, and the bus from the swim to T1 was brought on from using the bus so much down at Disney World a month ago.

My next Lake Placid dream better be me getting a Kona slot!!!