Lake Placid

Arrive at 3am you have no idea what a location looks like....and we crashed hard.  So much for staying on East Coast time- Ha!  I slept until 9 and then groggily found Starbucks outside the hotel.  We are staying at the North Woods Inn right in town 1/4 mile from the expo and race start... great location to be in.   Hotel is rustic.... but we have a small king room with kitchenette so we are golden,

I connected the Brandy and after coffee we headed to the swim.   Soooo beautiful!   The lake is surrounded by trees, real trees - no Southern CA wimpy trees.  As soon as we got there we found Maureen and Tom and suited up for swim.

Sure enough there is a cable and it makes swimming/sighting really easy!!!  Hoping I get lucky on race day.  Will be interesting to see if race is wet suit legal as the water was warm.  Personally I hope no wetsuit!  

The lake is not big- we nearly swim the whole lake and the beach area is not spacious....I cannot fathom the mayhem come race day.  The lake is across the street from T1- so don't be expecting any fast transitions....it must be close to 1/2 mile.  We had a stellar swim and it felt good to shake out all the travel.  

Onto registration to get "tagged" and duh....forgot my license - so we checked out the expo, ate lots Bonk Breaker samples, GU chomps and random other tiny food until we needed real food. Green Organix was selling heirloom tomatoes with EVO, basil and seasonings by the bowl- OMG so good....that and a monster GF brownie + iced coffee and well not rally breakfast/lunch of Ironman but it was good.  JB bought a bag of brownies...I need to avoid those. 

I powered out some work and chilled...love vacation :)  and back we went to get registered and get my bike.     878 cannot say I love the number but it works!  But I can say I love the backpacks..thank you IM for skipping the string bags which I donate to the goodwill  and stepping it up to a real bag we can use!!

And look at the mountain of them. Ok so its not about the schwag... but I like to get cool stuff

Found some delicious grilled chicken and veggies and then the hammer dropped....sooo tired- nap time!  kept is short as I want to get on normal time.... caught up on facebook, read blogs, surfed the net, worked for a few hours and now off to test the bike for a quick spin....

John is out and about... being the patient sherpa and very supportive, well until he said, why are you rolling a 1080 when it's so heavy, why not lighter wheels..... I yelled shut up, shut up, if you cannot be supportive then go way and I stomped into the bonk breaker tent.  So I explained the aerodynamics usurp weight at times and after careful thought and analysis and seeking opinions I opted for this wheel set up.