2015 IM Lake Placid - behind the scenes part 1

This race experience was extra special because we had all of our Trimarni athletes in one house (except for Heidi who was with her family/friends just a few houses down - super convenient!).

With two of our athletes doing their first Ironman, we could not have asked for a better venue for our athletes to enjoy racing for 140.6 miles.

I rented a large house for our group of 10 which was off Greenwood, just about .6 mile from Main Street. We had several side streets to walk on which was nice to avoid any busy roads.

We were less than 1/2 mile from the local grocery store (Hannaford) and it was easy for everyone in our group to get to downtown by foot.

Our 3-floor rental home had a lot of character. There were a lot of updates inside the home but a lot of old features like claw foot tubs, creaky wood floors and lots of decorative features. Needless to say, we loved this house because it always was the topic of conversation for our group.
Campy, of course, loved his fenced-in backyard.

Now I will say that our kitchen was amazing! We would all gather around the island and drink coffee/eat and chat in the morning and throughout the day.
We also had an industrial sized refrigerator and freezer which we had no problem filling up on a daily basis.

It was great to be there with our athletes as a spectator. Although I was on the sidelines on race day, I still felt as if I was one of the group on the days leading up to the race. I had a great time training in Placid for my mini training camp and being around the positive energy from our crew.

Adam, Mike, Karel, Joe and me before our first swim in Mirror Lake.

Mirror Lake is unbelievable - not just because of it's backdrop but there is a cord under water that is visible while you are swimming so that you can just follow the line without getting off course. There are small buoys lined up in the lake so this makes for a very easy-to-navigate swim course. Plus, the rectangle swim has two turn buoys that are just about 25 meters from one another so the swim is literally and out and back course with little to no chop. The water temp was around 72 degrees but with a wetsuit, it was comfortable if not warm at times. By Tues, when the temperature increased from mid 70's race weekend to 90's, we swam with only our speedsuits.

Another great feature of Lake Placid is the bike-friendly roads no matter where you are staying. With the course being a two loop course from Placid to Keene (from the ski jump side) to Jay/Upper Jay to Wilmington and back up to Placid on the Whiteface mountain side, you will always see athletes out on the course training or gearing up for the race. I rode the course twice (75 miles on Thurs and 56 miles on Saturday) and I never felt alone out there.

It was great for Karel and I to help out our athletes as needed on the days leading up to the race. There is so much to do before an Ironman that it is easy to get overwhelmed to race for 140.6 miles.

Our athletes were super prepared, physically, going into this race as Joe, Adam, Mike and Heidi put in the work and made huge gains in fitness over the past 8-9 months.

As for the "sherpa's" we had fun helping out as needed.

Campy enjoyed his vacation and although he was exhausted on a daily basis from all the excitement, he could always be found in the kitchen on his comfy chair.

Taylor (Adam's wife), Erica (Joe's wife) and Erin (Mike Girlfriend) were amazing. Whereas I was out training or with our athletes, these ladies did an exceptional job feeding the group. The meals were outstanding!