Once, twice, three times an Ironman!

We're home from Lake Placid, where on Sunday I became an Ironman for the third time. The LAST time (at least for a year). Lake Placid has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. I was talking about how much I wanted to move there even before we got out of the car. The race itself was awesome. It was tough and I finished slower than what I had hoped for, but that's okay. I'm just glad that I got to be a part of such a wonderful experience and that I crossed the finish line. My time was 14:20:08 - faster than Wisconsin but slower than Florida. I didn't expect it to be faster than Florida - Florida is so flat and boring that if you could figure out a way to strap a pillow onto your handlebars you could take a nap on the bike ride - but I didn't expect to go over 13:30, and definitely not 14:00. Oh well - my third one in 3 years and my second in 8 months. I was tired. I won't bore y'all with details - after all, most (not all) of my readers are knitters, not triathletes, so the talk of misplacing my bike gloves in T1 or stomach cramps while in the aero position or the lack of embarrassment while farting during the run doesn't really mean much - but I will give you some pictures.

We flew into Albany then rented a car and drove for 2 hours to Lake Placid. The scenery was gorgeous enough for me not to knit in the car, but Hayden missed out:


The view from our hotel, the Crown Plaza:

The lake you're looking at is Mirror Lake, the lake that the swim portion of the race takes place in. It is the narrowest of all Ironman swims, and therefore the toughest. I felt like people were trying to intentionally drown me by swimming on top of me most of the time I was in the water. It was a slugfest.

Hayden and I on Main Street 2 nights before the race:


I think this was taken during the start of the second loop of the run:

I say second and not first loop because I was smiling on the first loop.

Hayden found some dirt to play in while waiting to see me throughout the day:


And speaking of my little cutie patootie, here are some pictures at one of his now Most Favorite Places on Earth, North Pole, NY. Santa lives there! (Isn't it amazing that the North Pole looks like a huge ice dildo?)




The race was Sunday. We stayed in Lake Placid on Monday, then went to Niagara Falls on Tuesday. Before we left, Hayden got to get a couple of shots in on the putting green in front of our hotel:


Then it was off to the falls. We went to the Canadian side, which we had heard is much better than the New York side. Hayden is faking a smile in this picture:

The Falls were too much for him - too noisy, too wet, too fast, too everything. He was much happier when we went in the gift shop and he got to try on hats:


After a dinner in Canada at an Italian restaurant with a mariachi band playing on the patio (WTF???), we went to our hotel in Buffalo for a 5-hour sleep before getting up to fly home this morning. I. AM. TIRED.

On the knitting front, it was all about the garter stitch during this trip. I got about 25 more rows done on my Log Cabin Blanket, and I worked on a garter stitch scarf out of Noro Iro on the plane. I visited Adirondack Yarns in Lake Placid on Saturday, but there wasn't anything there that wowed me. I was disappointed. Oh well - not that I needed to buy anything anyway. I am bound and determined to finish that blanket before I start anything else. I need to hurry up because I need to knit Hayden more sweaters for this school year. They've come up with a Standard School Attire, and now he can wear only pink, red, blue, green or white tops with his black, navy blue, or khaki pants. (He's also supposed to keep his shirt tucked in at all times, but that's not gonna happen. This autistic second-grader will be pulling his shirt out of his pants all day long and not learn a thing if they try to enforce that with him.) No, I'm not really happy about this, but I guess I can understand. Too many kids out there have their butts hanging out of their pants or wear shirts that say "You've never met a motherf*cker quite like me" across the front. (Okay, I've never seen a kid in a shirt like that, but we did see a dad wearing one while he rode gokarts with his family on Father's Day. Ah, only in the South.)