Lake Placid- 2008

Turns out even signing up for Ironman Lake Placid is gruelling.

I logged on at 8:45 this morning, signed into my Active account, searched for and found the Lake Placid entry, and started reloading every five minutes or so. I was there last year in line and seemed to remember something about not everyone in line getting into the race or something like that. I was unable to sign up because we still debating taking the Hawaii slot, although I did make it to the head of the line before things went south.

Back to this year. Around 9:30 I reloaded the page, clicked on register and got a confirmation page saying online registration was CLOSED. OK, I've heard of Ironman races closing quickly but half an hour BEFORE they open. I let out a howl, which frightened a co-worker.

A moment later, an announcement showed up on the page indicating that on-site registration demand was going to delay online registration and that a message would be available at 1PM. Not online registration, but a message.

Well, around 12:30 the message changed to announce that 800 slots were to be made available at 1:00 PM. I was out running at the time but caught it ten minutes later. Around 12;50 they announced at the awards banquet that 800 online spots were going to be available. I got a call from Steve.

I hit reload again at about 12:58, got in and registered, as did Margit. The race closed in under ten minutes !