my life, travels and some other cool stuff..
marcfrydman @ gmail dot com / www.marcfrydman.com / www.rhodyram.com / Twitter / About Me
The mass swim start… can you spot me in the crowd of 2,588 athletes swimming 2.4 miles while trying to avoid elbows and kicks to the head?
I should have crossed the finish line 3 hours earlier, which still bothers me a bit.. though, with all the wacky issues that came up - it turned into a true battle out there.. making for a really unique race and there was nothing better than having my Mom place the medal on me at the finish line.
Mom was such a trooper when it came to popping the humungous blisters on my feet after the Ironman.
The humungous blisters that I got on my feet during yesterday’s Ironman.. making it ridiculously painful to run the marathon.. have you ever seen anything like it?!
I am an Ironman! and, it was quite a battle! In fact, almost everything went wrong.. I was on my way to breaking 13 hours when my bike chain snapped in two (I thought my day was over, though luckily race support had it fixed within a half hour) my calf muscle popped again, then the cramping all over my body took over.. then I got the most excruciating blisters under my feet forcing me to walk a lot of the marathon (a 7 hour marathon is atrocious, I may have to horrify you with photos of the blisters so you see why) but, I kept fighting and made it happen.. crossing the finish line 18 minutes shy of the official cut off at midnight - the 17th hour.. before spending two hours in the medical tent with an IV to rehydrate myself.. Despite all the issues that went wrong for me, the most incredible support from my family, coaches, and teammates helped to make sure that it was one of the best days of my life!!
A bunch of people asked about tracking me over the course of the day tomorrow… It’s really hard to estimate my times, there are so many factors involved.. I hope to do a little better than this.. though, here is a rough idea of where I’ll be and when.. You should be able to track me live online at ironmanlive.com/tracking.php?race=lakeplacid&year=2012 and there is also an iPhone app called Irontrac that you can use.. Thank you so much for all your support over the last 10 months while I trained for this event.. and especially all the encouraging words over the last few days.. it means so much and is so helpful to me!!
I killed it! I broke 6 hours at the very warm, windy, and hilly Tupper Lake half Ironman today.. by 14 minutes!! Which is 38 minutes faster than my best half Ironman! I am so happy!!!
..the final push! It’s hard to believe that Saturday’s half Ironman will simply be a training session for us - with an 80 mile ride the following morning on the Lake Placid bike course to “ensure you emptied your tanks” as coach put it… and to then experience the “wonder of the taper” something that comes along with so many mixed emotions after training 6 days a week for almost 10 months.. Supposedly - the “hay is in the barn” we’ve trained really hard for this.. and now — it comes down to ‘the depth of my ability to suffer and endure’ a few more words of wisdom from coach that will ring through my head many times over the next 26 days…..
Chrissie Wellington
..but that’s just the bit you do at the end of an ironman!? What the hell did I get myself into?!
