Ironman Mont Tremblant - Friday action!!

Thursday was a long day - due to some pretty horrific traffic on the 401 we took 9 hours to do the 6 hour journey up to to Tremblant, with the last 20 minutes in torrential rain. Just in time to coincide with unloading the car. The good news is that we have struck gold with the condo - it is very nice and spacious with beautiful views over the lake.

On Friday morning we headed down for a practice swim. 20 degrees in the water and even a floating free espresso bar on the swim course. Very nice. 

Following the swim we went for a short run and breakfast.

After some tourist action looking round the beautiful Mont Tremblant resort, we relaxed with some coffees and queued for athlete registration. A very long queue, similar to the one on the 401 yesterday but we were processed efficiently and headed down to the expo for some last minute items. The expo actually seems quite small here - not too much to look at but adequate for our needs. 

We knew the 'Banquet' and Race Briefing was from 5.00 till 7.30 so we thought we would join the queue early and get in and out. No such luck - the queue was already the length on the entire resort at 4.40. We joined it anyway and eventually made it through to the food at 5.30. Having found a seat we were then treated to a fantastic band with loads of drums, a strangely exciting act carving up blocks of ice with chainsaws and a rousing Gospel choir. Unfortunately this was interspersed with speeches from everyone from Mike Reilly (the voice of Ironman!) to the Ironman Sales Director, Mayor of Tremblant, chief of Fire Department and so on and so on. By the time the athletes briefing started it was 8.00pm and they had to cut it short and rattle through it. All in our trip to the race briefing took 4 hours!

After a hasty exit we managed a quick catch up with the support crew ( who were all drunk) and headed to bed for some well deserved sleep.