Summer and Ironman

Summer is beautiful! My garden is out of control with the plants and produce it is giving forth! My running is mixed with many bad days and then every 4 weeks a good one but I have had a nice amount of biking but little swimming. I had a fantastic run last week 15.5 miles in Lake Placid on a day that was overcast and about 65 degrees out. It was a perfect long run day and I needed that boost as my last few long runs have beat me up from the heat. As long as the heat stays abaited for the marathon, it looks like I could have a great day. I will face it, in the Adirondacks, we are on a downward swing and the temps will be great for running in the next few weeks with highs only around 75ish. I will take it.

Going back a few weeks, we volunteered for Ironman and then signed up the next day. It is always a fabulous experience but this year was different. The organizers for the event seem to think that we just want to volunteer and get our spot the next day without doing much work (or at least the volunteer organizer that we worked for thought that). I was excited to see the athletes especially our friends who have trained so hard for the race and just helping out for the event that we love so much. In the process of volunteering I was yelled at for holding the cups of "Perform" incorrectly and my friend was yelled at for putting too many ice cubes into cups "The athletes can only have 2 ice cubes". Our response to the ice cube thing was "Those athletes paid a lot of money to do this race, let them have enough ice cubes to cool them down." We were also told that if we didn't fulfill our 5 hr commitment to her standards, she would call and tell them we couldn't have a volunteer spot on registration day. (We were told while waiting in line that other volunteer spots were asked to do their job and when it was done, they could go watch the race.) It was disappointing to be treated this way as I have watched this race since its inception in Lake Placid and volunteered for 3 yrs before doing my first race and I love to volunteer at the race. It made me angry that she didn't think we truely wanted to be here helping out and treating us very inappropiriately. On the bright side of the day though, my nieces (Kaelah and Sierra) both came with my parents later in the afternoon and all volunteered at the aid station and loved every minute of it. I was excited that Kaelah got to enjoy volunteering and the joys of giving back at an age where she slightly understood what this means (she is 7). The athletes were amazing to them and were so excited to be given the all important ice from the girls!

The girls are so excited to see us do the race next year too because of this experience. Our friends did amazingly! It was an emotional day watching this time, and knowing exactly how it felt to cross that finish line and wanting that feeling again. I forgot about that feeling until I watched again and realized I crave it - it is like a drug that you just need to experience once a year. In all of the excitement of the day, there were five of us who signed up for next year, it will be all of our come back to Ironman and I am excited about the training to be had with all of them!

Kaelah did get something else this year from watching Ironman. She was walking with me a couple weeks ago and said:
Kaelah: "Kelly, when can I tryout for Ironman?".
Kelly: "There is no tryouts for Ironman you just sign up."
She thought for a minute: "So, I can do it next year."
Kelly: "You have to be a little older to do an Ironman."
Kaelah: "So when I'm 9?"
Kelly: "Older"
Kaelah: "12??"
Kelly: "No, when you are 18"
Kaelah, after thinking for about a minute: "That's a long time. I want to tryout to do it next year."
So, maybe I have another Ironman on my hands some day! I can't wait for that day! In the meantime, maybe we will try to get her to do IronKids next year as I think that she will be happy with anything that says Iron on it!!!