Ironman Lake Placid Sign up

Yesterday I signed up for my first Ironman race, July 20th, 2008 in Lake Placid, NY. For those that do not know, an Ironman race is comprised of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. 140.6 total miles.

I'd say I was pretty lucky to get signed up. The sign-up process was very stressful. I was going to actually take the 10+ hour drive up to Northern New York to sign up in person, however my wife suggested that I was crazy and shouldn't make that drive. She is a Financial Planner and was already apprehensive of the registration cost, let alone gas money to travel all the way up there. I decided to take my chances signing up on-line.

On-line registration was to begin on Monday July 23rd, at 11am, after those that were on-site had registered beginning at 9am. I found out at 10:30am that on-line registration was delayed and that Ironman North America would "make an announcement" on the status of registration at 1pm, due to the high demand from the on-site line. Some folks have estimated over 1000 people in line to sign up! At that point I was sure there weren't going to be any slots left for those of us waiting on-line. Then, at about 12:30pm, there was hope. Ironman North America made an announcement that on-line registration was going to open at 1pm. A few minutes later, it was announced that there were only going to be 800 slots available for on-line registration. I started clicking the registration button at 12:50pm and got in a few minutes before 1pm. Sold out in less than 10 minutes!

I made the first step towards my goal of becoming an Ironman.