We got here on Wednesday afternoon, easy drive up with good weather and clear roads.
This is an amazingly beautiful part of the world, forests,hills, lakes, friendly people. The whole community has embraced the Ironman race and everywhere we turn there is something happening related to the race.
Weather so far has been on / off with sunshine and rain. Forecast for tomorrow and Sunday is sunny, humid and warm - not sure I believe it yet. Will have to see...
Our hotel is great, right in the heart of town, we can walk everywhere and relax. For race day is an ash walk to the start line and transition area.
Woke up this morning and headed down to the lake for a morning swim, mist was rising from the lake and coming down from the mountains making for a spectacular walk down the road to the beach:
Training wise I am finished now. Did a swim / bike / run on Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a bit of a struggle as I was still aclimatizing to the altitude. Didn't feel great getting off the bike and was a bit nervous for the rest of the day. This mornings training was much better and felt stronger and more in control of my heart rate. A good way to wrap up training :) now it's 2 days of rest getting ready for Sunday morning.
A quick word about the lake. After spending the last few months crawling through the Long Island Sound, sucking in mouthfuls of salty and dirty water (as well as a few jelly fish), Lac Tremblant is like swimming through velvet. Clear clean water, no current make for a great swim. There is even a coffee serving pontoon boat moored a quarter mile off shore serving coffee to us as we swim by.
The boys and Claud's took part in the Ironkids races today. Kyle did 500m, Luke did 1k and Claud's the 5k. Really proud of all of them and the best part was Mike "Voice of Ironman" calling everyone over the finish line. The end for all the races was the actual finish line for the main ironman race which is pretty cool.
Mike Reilly doing his thing:
We've done a lot so far, including heading up the mountain to take in the views. I think we'll be back for ski season at some point.
The town has really embraced the event and transformed itself into the center of the triathlon world for the week. All the stores have ironman banners up and everyone is so welcoming of the participants. This morning I dragged a dripping wetsuit through the lobby, followed by rolling my bike through while wearing cleats, only to be great by smiles and well wishes for a good ride.
Even the ice cream stores wish us good luck:
Tonight was the athletes banquet, I actually found it a little underwhelming. Fr some reason I was expecting something more inspirational but it felt a bit flat. Did meet a ton of great people though, including a 40+ team from Puerto Rico. Best thing about dinner was the ironman brownies!!
The evening ended off with a great fireworks show. We watched it from the bottom of the village and then rode the gondola to the top of the village as the show was ending and caught amazing views.
Thats it for tonight. More tomorrow on how nervous I am feeling!! 36 hours to go (probably less if I really do the math).
No comments:
Post a Comment