Ironman Lake Placid Volunteer Recap- Part One

Mirror Lake- Swim Course

I have known about Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) for quite some time now because we have been vacationing there most summers and you tend to see the flags, banners and hear chatter around town. This was the races fifteenth edition. About five years ago, a close family friend Scott (the one responsible for bringing Rob into the cycling cult) attempted IMLP and because of health reasons related to his diabetes, had to pull out during the run. Scott and his family have volunteered at the race numerous times and so last summer while camping at the KOA we decided to reserve camping sites for 2013, volunteer and at the time, Rob planned on signing up for the 2014 race. My friend and training partner Molly and some of her friends decided they would sign up also and Molly reserved us a volunteering shift in transition, doing gear bags from 5-9am. We had also planned to stay until the last hour to watch the final athletes come in before midnight, we knew it would be a really long day.

Beach/Boat House on Mirror Lake

Since we were going to be away from the campground for the entire day, we all packed bags and brought what we thought we would need to survive the day. I brought a magazine, which I wound up never using and Rob brought his wetsuit so he could swim the course after our shift had finished. Our priorities are slightly different! We figured out logistically where we had to be and when and set our alarm for 3:00am. Don't worry, we planned on hitting snooze at least once. When the alarm went off Rob and I were surprisingly awake, I think it was the excitement of the day, and we weren't even racing!! Rob went out to make some coffee with the Keurig and it was quickly realized that Dad only had stock piles of decaf coffee. What the heck was that going to do for us?!?! Not too shortly after, Molly awoke from her slumber and joined us as we stumbled around the RV trying to get ready when it was so dark out still. The volunteer shuttles began at 4am and since we had a little bit of a drive to the lot and because we weren't quite sure how long the wait was going to be and because I am a worry wort, we left the RV at 3:45am. The funny thing was that as we were leaving the campground so were about five other cars, not something we expected to see even though we knew a lot of volunteers and participants were staying at the KOA. We made our way down the dark and twisty route 86 and turned on to River Road. Because both of these roads would hold a couple thousand athletes later in the day we loved seeing the signs, banners and spray painted messages along the road. If we weren't already excited it was really hitting us now. Somewhere on River Road the low gas signal came on in Rob's car and so of course I began to panic. The panic only lasted, well most of the day, as I knew getting around town would be challenging and didn't know what would be open when we left at 1:00am. I knew where we had to go, but it was so dark and there seemed to be no other civilization awake that I started to get nervous, until we came upon a field that had a couple people and a school bus. We were the first volunteer cars to actually pull into the field and I thought maybe my need to be early might not have been warranted.

Rob and Molly on the Shuttle sometime
around 4:15am.

We stopped at the other lots and picked up a couple volunteers, okay I wasn't the only crazy early one, and we eventually arrived at our destination at the shuttle lot near the ice arena. Even though it was so dark still, the place was bustling with activity and we made our way around transition to find where we needed to report for volunteering.

Transition and finishing chute. 

Along the way we passed the body marking area where lots of athletes were stripping down to their skivvies to be written on. In addition to numbers and ages we saw lots of smiley faces being written in thick, black marker.

Lots of excited volunteers and anxious athletes.

The emails we received from the transition coordinator, Randy, leading up to the big day were funny and we were looking forward to meeting him in person to put a face with the emails. Since he did not hold a meeting the day before, we were told to tell security that we were working with Randy and that he would give us our wristbands and t-shirts when we started our volunteer shift. Well when we approached the, not too friendly security, they gave us a hard time about not having wristbands and didn't seem too happy with "who ever this Randy guy was". They made us walk all the way around transition to a back entrance to talk to whoever was there. I think they just wanted us out of their hair.

Athletes doing last minute bike prep.

The three of us walked around back and approached a couple people setting up the bike entrance/exit. They were much nicer and pointed us to someone who pointed us to the right place. However, when we arrived there was no Randy, or other volunteers for that matter. Chalk it up to being there a just a tad early. A couple other guys (one who we later found out was the race director) gave us some (unclear) info about what to do and told us that is how they thought Randy did it, but saved by the bell, Randy arrived before they walked away and quickly informed us that is NOT how he does things. He was very laid back, but still organized and put me in charge of handing out shirts as the other transition volunteers arrived. The first hour from 5-6am was all about answering athlete questions and pointing them in the correct direction. The most common questions were: what do we do with our (green) morning clothes bag, where do our special needs bags go, what time is transition open until, where is the exit for transition, where is body marking? Some of these questions I thought were funny, because if they found their way into transition, couldn't they find their way out? Plus most of the athletes had to walk right by body marking to get into transition. But based on the many, many, deer in the headlights looks we got, I knew they had a lot going on in their minds. I even had an athlete frantically come up to me asking if I had a cell phone. Apparently he had forgotten all of his water bottles and needed to call for back up. He was so appreciative and I was happy to help put out one small fire. At 6am we corralled all of the athletes out of transition and got the low down on what we would need to do once athletes came back for their transition onto the bikes. Since Randy was so laid back and we didn't have any work to do until the athletes finished their swim, we all headed to Mirror Lake to watch the swim start.

 
The swim start at IMLP has always been epic and I have not only heard about how cool it is, but have even watched YouTube videos of it. All athletes start in the water and start swimming at the cannon blast. Well about a month or so ago we heard that Ironman was testing a new start at some races, a
self-seeded start, and that this year's IMLP would indeed be testing it as well. So we weren't quite sure what to expect and we were too far away from the beach to really be able to tell what was going on.

Athletes finishing their practice swims.

Getting corralled on the beach.

What it seemed like was that all athletes started on the beach and lined up behind placards with different expected finish times, for example 0-60 minutes, etc. When the cannon went off Pro men and then Pro women went off running into the water. Then a few minutes later went everyone else, almost single file into the water. The process took so long that when Pro leader Andy Potts got out of the water to begin his second loop, there was a line of athletes still feeding into the lake for their first loop. The start wasn't as exciting as what I would think previous years would have been, but I think it was safer for the athletes and that is what is important. Plus it was still neat to be able to get to watch the start!!

Part Two Coming Soon!