Memorial Day weekend training in Lake Placid is getting ever more popular. This year, besides TriLife athletes, many unaffiliated athletes and large groups from Asphalt Green Triathlon Club (New York City), Ed Zerkle’s Team Z (D.C.), and Todd Wiley’s TWiley Sport (Pennsylvania) were highly visible training on local roads.
Weather conditions were almost perfect (for meaningful training camp – not triathlon-themed vacation). Rain clouds and sun and everything in between, precipitation from heavy rain to light sprinkle, air temps from 40′s to 80′s, Mirror Lake water temps of 57 to 60 degrees, tail-, side- and headwind of zero to 20-25 miles per hour. Still, to be perfect (to satisfy this coach), weather should have presented us with one 100+ degree day and one rain deluge day.
Race roads conditions were as expected after the hard winter. The good news that local media just reported that paving of almost four miles of Cascade Lakes (fast downhill) section was approved by local authorities. The bad news is that nobody said anything about fixing bad road sections after Jay, on Hazelton out-and-back and on Wilmington to Mirror Lake.
Local drivers habits were also as challenging… as if TriLife coaches paid certain locals to remind our athletes to re-enforce bike handling and surviving skills. Seriously, why such luck of consideration? Do one really need to see how close their over-sized side mirror can be over the road shoulder without braining one of the cyclists? Does one feel that gentle curve away when passing cyclists has detrimental effect on their vehicle’s fuel economy and as such negatively affects global warming and current and future petrochemical-driven military conflicts? Or can it be explained by the mood after the long cold winter, or inability to spatially recognize space that their large pickup truck is occupying on a road, or just dislike of annual invasion by triathletes? Or just ignorance, jealousy, and luck of consideration? (You know, those things that separate human and some other high level animals from beasts.)
Mirror Lake was in pristine condition – clear and clean. The first object that greeted coaches on our first visit to the Mirror Lake was a small alligator (no, soft plastic toy type). Rope lines and buoys were already placed on a lake but offset laterally (i.e., not the exact direction and positioning as during the Ironman) and provided good visual guidance and ability to work on navigation and sighting when swimming.
All TriLife coaches maximized their time on the Mirror Lake: some – in the water, some – near the water, some – above it. Some spent so much in it that strange growth occurred around their head…
Whiteface Mountain, thank you for asking, was usual “fun.” What else can “energize” this coach as much as the freezing speed-chill of eight mile descent very early in the morning and than spending next 30 minutes with hands in front of car heater in order to unclasp them from squeezing-the-brakes grip. It also was soothing to see how certain TriLife coaches still would get joy from inflicting pain and suffering on their colleagues. Specifically, Coach Scott challenging Adam to climb whole trip up out of saddle (successfully, BTW) or the same Scott carefully selecting routes (wrong word really since route implies road or at least path that had been used before) on slopes of Whiteface to field test how fast running shoes of other coaches and other coaches (excluding apparently charged with helium and bounciness Dennis) can be destroyed by scree, rocks, and snow, and unnatural uphill and downhill gradients.
Interesting observation from several athletes on their “mental horizon shrinkage” during hard and long sessions – athletes meaningfully discussed “that bungee on a road” section when Nature’s wonders are all around them to provide more glorious markers… Fatigue levels were fairly high after couple hundreds miles in the saddle and running almost 40 miles, to the point their mental confusion resulted in mixed-up sports training (see wetsuited sand mini-marathon below).
Wilmington to was a wind tunnel on two days (especially Sunday) and provided good field testing for aero gear and positioning. More motivated and less fatigued were able to sustain speeds of excess of 7 mph on certain sections 
Besides the damaged equipment and multiple flats, some injuries, loads of dirty laundry, re-adjusted egos, and flaunting Coach Ross instruction on unnecessary calories (see evidence below), athletes performed very well at the camp. Congratulations! Now back to training.
