Post-Ironman Week

What happens the week after an Ironman?

Thirsty

The Post-Race festivities were just about as brutal as the Iroman itself. Last year at my first 70.3 in Muskoka I missed out on some get togethers with friends because I was not feeling well. While that is understandable, I regretted not celebrating my big accomplishment with friends and swore I would not make the same mistake here at Lake Placid.

Immediately after the race I went straight for the food zone. I was so happy to have caught Derek(DRog), Training Payne, Simon(TriTwins) at a table that I ignored my body screaming at me. In the 30 minutes I sat there chatting with them, my body temperature plummeted and legs seized right up! I was dangerously hypothermic and my wife had to escort me to my warm clothes bag as I struggled to walk on my own. If there is one thing that I take from this it is - GET YOUR WARM CLOTHES ON ASAP!! It was an extremely trying time after the race. It took hours to get warmed up again. Oh and don't sit down for 30 minutes without stretching or massage. You may never walk again if you do haha!

I've never BONKED post-race before. I've 'hit walls' and 'bonked' during exercise but never post-exercise. While crashing hard on the side of the road on some building's wooden steps, Training Payne was going by and caught me in my broken down state. Awww phuck, thats twice today this guy has got me! lol!  Of course he snapped a pic and followed it up with an awesome one-liner - "Welcome to Ironman!"  haha!

After struggling to warm up we hit a local restaurant to satisfy a craving I had all week - Wings! The hot chicken wings at Northwoods Inn are excellent! After about one bite though my body stepped up and gave me a big middle finger. It was only fair really. My mind won all day and forced my body to push through and finish the race, and now with the race over my body put a stop to it. My Body gets whatever it wants, so shut up Mind. lol! The wings were hot sauce, and the body decided it has had enough pain for one day - and refused to eat them. I understand.

Being my first Ironman I wanted to take it ALL in. I looked forward to hitting the Midnight party at the finish line. I was tired, cold, sore but who cares - those poor people out on the course are probably having a much tougher time. We got a wicked seat in the bleachers as to see the faces on the finishers as they came down the finisher's chute! The emotions on them were awesome to watch. Between finishers though I had to sit down and gather my strength to cheer. At first I was freezing so I was wrappedin a blanket, then I got super-boiling hot and stripped everything off, then I got teeth-chattering cold again. This cycle went on for the entire night but I mustered up the strength to cheer every finisher through from 10:30pm on until the last finisher at 12:07. Lois didn't make the cut-off. I cried.

Over 350 Mdots - Approx $6 Each

Some sick sick individual decided it would be funny to open the Finisher's clothing store at 7am the day after an Ironman. I was determined to get some finisher's gear so we were up at 5:30am after less than 4hrs sleep to get in line at the store. WHAT THE F*CK!? There was already a line-up out around the corner!? Triathletes are a strange breed.

No matter, I dropped many more dollars on everything I wanted, got all the sizes just before the people behind us were left with slim pickings. They only let people into the store 10 at a time. Probably a good idea. We met some awesome people in line though, seriously you could chat with ANY triathlete that day and they were like your best friend for life. Everyone had an awesome story, some happy and some sad but all extremely interesting. The most surreal place on earth is a Town the day after hosting an Ironman event.

We hooked up with Training Payne for a post-race party that started at noon hour. Fran and I ducked out in the afternoon to do some touristy stuff. Afterwhich we returned at 9pm to find the party still going on. We stayed until 4am, didn't get to bed until the sun rose while Simon and Bryan got kicked out of the room by hotel staff since they were about to serve the breakfast haha!

This made for an exhausting Tuesday of which we put in the remaining touristy stuff. If there is one thing you MUST do at Lake Placid - drive to the top of Whiteface Mountain. Wow. Well worth post-poning the extremely late drive home. Another all nighter.

If that wasn't enough, we pulled another all nighter getting shit-faced drunk at another party back home that Bryan was hosting. I think we left at almost 7am that night. So needless to say the following Canadian long weekend consisted of sleeping for almost 60 hrs straight. It was a really tough week, but its all part of the experience. I didn't want to miss a single moment of a chance to celebrate or drink beer Post-Race week. Well worth it!

No THAT's a Bong.

I didn't get any workouts in during that post-race week. Between all nighters and hangovers I was desperate to find time to sleep. The weekend was more sleep than I had planned, especially with the weather being so beautiful. I just gave-in and let my body rest. I've never slept so much in my life, it felt so good even with my mind stomping it's feet and having a hissy fit because my body refused to go out an enjoy the nice weather. It just wasn't going to happen.

My first workout was 8 days after the race. I read that you're supposed to wait 2 weeks before a run but stupid me thought I'd try anyways. The first 5km felt OK, the last 5km almost killed me. At the turn around my HR skyrocketed and I felt like vomitting. I was running with friends so I just kept running and stressed my system out to keep going. Not one of my brightest moments but oh well, I tried. More on this later...


I also ate like an absolute slob. My SNACKS alone were thousands of calories, I held NOTHING back. I satisfied every craving, and believe me I had alot of them. It was disgusting really. I'd polish down 4 pop-tarts and 6 Reese Peanut butter cups, just because I felt like it. I ate entire bag of Crazy bread with EXTRA EXTRA garlic butter and cheese. No portion control whatsoever. There was no limits to my disgustingness. It felt goooooood. PFG's know how to eat. I think I gained a record amount of weight this week.


















As of 9 days post-race though, I've gone back to healthy eating. I'm happy to say I'm back on track as of Tuesday. I only have one more craving that needs to be satisfied - McDonalds. Guess what I'm doing for lunch? Mmmmhhhhhmmmmm yum yum! I promise to behave after this. I think.

Goodbye Lake Placid

View from our Cabin

Miracle on Ice

Olympic Ice

We swam down there in the flume!

Nice Bling. I'm feeling inadequate haha!