So in case you are still reading…
The day before - head up w/ Tyler_Durden, uneventful, other than our lunch stop at Mickey D’s, as we aspired to be JV minor league developmental squad Team Dumpster members, and thus our meal of choice was the chicken club sandwich (cuz it has bacon on it), large fries, and a big ol’ soda. I also had an ice cream cone for dessert.
Arrive Long Lake, check in. Parkito is there, he’d f’d up and forgotten his wallet at registration the first time, so we all headed up to Tupper together to check in and pick up our swag bag (which other than the nice t-shirt and a single hammer gel, was utterly barren of anything else besides paper).
The carbo load dinner had started, and looked good, so since we were there anyway, we endulged ourselves.
Tasty! Chicken, meatballs, pasta, buttered rolls, and several yummy cookies and a brownie. Price was right too.
Pre-drove about half the bike course, which was enuff, I got the gist of it. Rolling, ok, I get it.
Checked out the run course, and Parke was like Julie Your Cruise Director, pointing out all the items of note along the way, where the hills (such as they were) were, etc. Very nice to see it in advance.
Down to L. Lake, hit the Irish pub for a beer and swapped stories about how we met our significant others. Parke’s story is the best. Our bartendress was young, blonde, and very attractive, so Parkito actively attempted to hook her and Mark up, but T_D had his game face on, and pretended not to be interested. We wandered over to Custard’s Last Stand for some dessert, and the “small” cones we got were gi-normous. Yum part deux!!
Back at the Adirondack, run across Chris G and gang, so we join them for another beer (UBU #2 for me), and then hit the hay.
Race day - we’re all up early, Mark and I each down 2 Ensure, and since we’re already up, we wander down to the car, where everybody else is milling around too. Might as well head out.
Get bodymarked, chipped, and drop our stuff at the TA. Standard pre-race deal, only there’s a TON of folks I know here today, between ST, HVTC, EpicMan, and just other folks I know from here and there. Nice chatting everybody up.
The swim - water is lovely, but a bit of chop. Even though my wave is large, for some reason I had the hardest time finding feet to draft, so I swam quite a bit solo. This sucked, and my time reflected it. Hit the turnaround, ok, WTF?? Where am I going? To make things worse, my wave has the day-glo hi-viz orange caps on, identical to the bouys, so all I can see are orange blobs everywhere. Hit the sand in 38:44 (UGH! so much for my dreams of sub-37, and in case anybody was wondering, yes, the Harriman swim musta been waaaay short), chip in at 38:57. Blah.
Can’t change it now, let’s get thru T1 and get rolling… T1 is 1:21.
**The bike **- It’s go-time! I mount up nicely, but then had the hardest time getting my damn gloves on. At least I’m moving, uh oh, I see a rider down, being carted off on a backboard, not good.
Hit the hills coming outta town, and I decide that I’ll push just a bit here, and I’m passing folks by the dozens. This continues on for the first 20 miles or so, then it begins to thin out a bit. I’m making good time, 10m in 27 mins, 20m in 53. Hit the turnaround in 1:12 and change, grab some water, and head back. Passed Chris G coming out, caught up to Yoda on the way back, who told me I was looking good for sub 4:30 (he didn’t know about my swim ;-p), and told me to get going instead of BSing with him, so I did. Coming thru town, an 18-wheeler pulls out slooooowly in front of me, am I going to be able to squeeze by the back of him, or slam on the brakes? Fortunately it’s the former.
Off the bike in 2:23 and change, cool! I made up for the lost time in the water, now I just hafta run. T1 is 1:00 flat, watch time is exacly 3:05:00, and I’m off…
The run - … or not. Within the first half mile, my gut starts killing me (same thing I got at EpicMan, crap!!!). I hit the first mile marker, 7:00. OK, that’s not what I wanted to see, but not terrible either. I pass mtlrunner, barely, and keep on trucking.
The pain continues, along with some quad cramping now. Great! I know how to fix that, it’s either electolytes, and/or a gel needed. Problem is, the gut is a slurry right now, so I’m just sipping water trying to clear that up, and still running slowly. So much for the 4:30 today, can I even break 1:30 on the run now? I’ll hafta do better than 7’s at some point if that’s gonna happen.
At mile 8, I finally get a little relief, and up the pace. This is aided by the trail run (which I like, and I have a rabbit up ahead to catch, so I start moving out), whoa nelly, 5:51? OK, so that “mile” was short, thank you God!!!
Can’t risk more gut issues, so I’m forgoing aid the rest of the way.
I catch another dude in my AG, Stan, and we chat a bit, and I motor on. Then reel in Boney, who asks me as I go by if he’s going to be happy when he sees my calf, and I assure him he will be. I see another dude in my AG, and I really don’t want him thinking he can go with me, so I catch my breath, come up behind him slowly, then blow by quickly and tell him to keep it rolling. Parke is going the other way, and tells me it’s time to go; I tell him I already am.
Mile marker 12, and I dig deeper, then it’s only a half mile, then I’m on the grass. There are 2 folks in front of me, and I sprint and pass them both with extreme predjudice (even tho one was a girl and the other not my AG), and cross the line.
4:32:39, a huge new HIM PB, in spite of the crappy swim and not being able to really run for the first 8m.
Turns out the first 8m was in 56 mins, the last 5m were < 32 mins, so thankfully I was finally able to go there at the end.
(that and it being short, did I mention? thank you God!!! 
I won’t bore you with the analytical watts and HR data.
Aftermath - hanging out w/ ST’ers, HVTC’ers, etc was a lotta fun. Everybody is sharing stories of how their day went, etc.
The food nazis were a little chintzy w/ the grub, total opposite of the pre-race feed. Oh well, my gut isn’t really digging too much food right at the moment anyway. At least there was plenty of coke.
Two funny stories, both at tetsuoni’s ‘expense’:
1 - somebody comes over and tells JM that he got dinged for a drafting penalty. WHAT!!!
He starts spinning around like a Tasmanian devil, and goes on a seek and destroy mission to find the offical and set him straight. (which he does, it was mistaken identity, as the drafter had a totally different race kit than what JM was wearing)
2 - we’re talking about how it went, and tetsuoni is all happy about his run split, and I’m griping about mine, since I couldn’t really run at all for the first 8m, gut problems, it sucked, I sucked, blah blah blah. JM then points out that we had pretty much identical run splits, and I said yeah, that was a crappy run for me. So then he starts second-guessing whether he had a good run or not, and we all got a giggle out of that. Sorry John.
We sit thru the awards (which were late, and hardly audible at all, about the only other snafu of the weekend), waiting to see the mystery man, Bryan Parker, but he stood us all up.
My man Parkito takes home 2nd place in his AG, nice! I get 4th in mine, tetsuoni took 1st, and T_D got 5th in his AG, so we all got some hardware. (T_D woulda traded his plaque in a hearbeat for another :05 seconds, which was my margin of victory over him on the day.) Kus, Schermy, SpinHo, and several other ST’ers took home hardware as well, it was a good haul.
Lotsa PB’s set today, just a perfect day for racing, and a great course to race on.
Headed home via LP and the northway, hit Mickey D’s again, this time with a vengeance. T_D snarfs down a 10 pack of nuggets, 3 cheeseburgers, large fries, shake; I opt for a double quarter pounder with cheese AND bacon (mmmMMMMmmm bacon, grrrrrooowwwwlllllllll…), fries, and a shake as well. Oh damn, that hit the spot.
150 grams of saturated fat? Bring it on! I am a TINMAN!!!
Great to see everybody at the race! What a fantastic day it was.