Looks like somebody spilled the beans early on that one. I'd be interested in that event if it turns out to be real.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Whether it is real or not, my Ironman days feel over. I can't imagine pulling myself together for IM fitness if this happens a hear from now. But assuming it happens, please come and race in our city, as it should be pretty awesome. I would imagine that the course will be reasonably fast assuming what I know about organizing events in this city and what roads you get authorization to shut down.

On a plus note if I do try and race, I don't need Nirvana, I don't need Air Canada losing my bike and can sleep in my bed and ride my commuter bike to swim start, lock it up and pick it up the next day (ride my TT bike home after racing). That would be cool.

Up and down the gats could slow things down.

What do you think Dev, swim at Britannia, bike on the Mikan and/or into the Gats, run through Andrew Haydon?

IM on Mikan (hate that name change BTW) ? Yikes. That is a lot of back and forth.

Brittania would be ok, into the gats, then run east to war museum, parliament, up one side of the canal and back down. Almost no traffic impact

Honestly I would thank Gatineau Park is "too hard" to make an IM successful. Each 42km loop is 680m (or so) of vertical). that is literally a 2800m vertical race. At best one loop and back to Ottawa on the various parkways, but I would think that with all the bridge closures and also dealing multiple layers of government (city of Ottawa, city of gatineau, NCC and multiple police forces), going across to the Quebec side is a pain (although the Ottawa Marathon does deal with all of that so who knows).

If I was organizing it, I would just close the normal Sunday bike day parkway routes, and you can easily have three loops of 60km WITH NO ADDITIONAL HEADACHE for the city compared to the same roads being closed EVERY SUNDAY. For the citizens of Ottawa nothing changes. The same roads are closed as every Sunday and on that weekend it is just an Ironman rather than random citizens cycling.

Further to that if it "just multiple parkway loops" (Western Parkway + Colonel By alone is 42 km round trip from Brittania to Carleton U as that was the Ottawa marathon course back in 1993....also my PB open marathon). Add in a loop on Queen E and you have 52km and on Col by all the way to Hogs back makes it 56km. So you just need to come up with 4 km more somewhere if you need to come up with 60km (maybe a loop thru carleton U). A course like that would be around 400m-500m of vertical for the entire race as you would need to climb Parliament hill 2x per loop and go to Hogs back 1x per loop. It's not totally flat but fast enough that people will keep coming back because the course is not TOO HARD (compared to Tremblant or LP).

Lots of hotels downtown assuming most of the run is downtown on the paths (easy to do at 4x5.5k out and back) like in Nice or Zurich and jack up the atmosphere. They could make the run "harder" going down by locks behind parliament hill. Lots of possiblities without going up to Gatineau Park. If I was the organizer, I would not take on that headache because the upside of how nice it is there, is not worth the organizational headache and slow times people would have.

We all know that easier courses with atmosphere "sell" so this is what I would focus on.

Now if this is happening I truly hope they have a 70.3 on the same day to both keep numbers up and selfishly so I can race.

The Nirvana link is blank now. What was the potential race date?

I still have the page loaded. Aug 3 2025

I’m intrigued!
Although, interesting timing with LP being late July and only 3hrs drive away.

 
i get the interest in avoiding closures. but i wonder if its hard to get people excited to pay what one does on a normal weekend in ottawa anyways.

Wasn't there talk of this being the last year of LP ?

 

For Lake Placid every year for the last twenty years has been the last year.


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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

Maybe Ottawa can be the goose that kills the golden LP egg.

I went and did LP race 12 times and got increasingly pissed off with the hotel minimal stays and gouging, and the hostility of the locals. I get it, having a flood of triathletes is painful, but if you are a tourist city this is what you have to deal with. Suck it up and deal with it. If IMLP gets killed because there is an IM Ottawa and my local community gets all the $$$ more than happy for LP to die on the vine after years of acting entitled (my last round at LP was 2013, but did it every year but two from 1999 to 2010).

I was planning on making a run at Maryland or LP, but the opportunity to do it on "home roads" is too big an opportunity to pass up - even if I've done whatever route they're planning a million times. Usually for these things its a struggle to shlup the kids around and find things for them to do, but if I can stay at home and stay in my own bed? Why not?

My bet is that they leverage the parkways and Mooney's bay for the swim. There's already a local tri that runs a few events out of there and it connects to the parkways with other minimal road closures. Two lap swim and then 3 (?) laps of the parkways. Maybe a lap of Gatineau if they're feeling spicy -take Champlain off the parkway to get there. The run can be on one of a few of the multi-use paths (Rideau Canal - Our Unesco heritage site - anyone?) that all converge in the area, or just through the local neighbourhood as the local tri does today.

Tons of parking at Canada Post, and a reasonably close connection to the LRT Line 2 (Confederation station), if it ever gets operational again. Plus, there's the mother of all climbing structures there for the kids, and a finish line at the Terry Fox facility.

The only question with any of the parkway routes is whether the LRT construction will interrupt.

So it turns out that Col By, Kitchizibi, and Gatineau without Champlain all make for more or less 90km route. Two loops would make a tough route through Gatineau, but this would be IMO, the most scenic route through downtown. And (critical for a town called Autowa) you can get away with really only closing 1 or 2 roads more than they usually do on a Sunday for bike days.

i'd sure welcome an IM in Ottawa and personally would love the Aug 3 date, but it is a long weekend; might be tough on the area?

mooney's bay looks like a great swim venue.

If the date is indeed Aug 3, 2025 - Anyone hazard a guess as to what slots it would offer?

I'm guessing that it would be Men 26 for Kona and Women 26 for Nice?

Actually on your map if you take the Quebec side out and go from Mooney's back to Lincoln fields and back that is literally 45 km (22.5km out and back). 4x would make the Col By section busy, but the rest from parliament hill to Lincoln fields you have four lanes. If you did the quebec side then as you said, it is almost 90km per loop without Champlain. That would make for a tough day...probably over 2000m of climbing overall so in the range of LP and Tremblant

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been hired to handle road closures.

You could also add Rockcliffe/Etienne Parkway for each loop and then only do Gatineau once, which is more reasonable. Col By x2, Kitchizibi x2, Rockcliffe/Etienne Parkway x2, and Gatineau x1 works out to 190k even with Champlain lookout, so just move the turnaround cones in a bit on the parkways and you'd have it. The only trouble is crossing over onto Rockcliffe would be having to keep traffic closed through the downtown area for the day.

Post of the day, week, month..

Heard it’s true. Interested to see the course! I think it’ll be a big hit here.

Maybe even two transitions; meech lake swim and gat loop to parkways with T2 in Mooney’s

I hadn't thought of a 2-Transition race - though having everyone descend from Gatineau would solve the elevation problem. Though the Meech Lake tri is much smaller than this would be - I'm not sure where you'd put T1, other than in P11, but then how do you get there?

If we think through where the swim course will be held, there's really only a few candidates where you can OWS:
-Meech Lake - easily the best swim course, but not much area for T1
-Britannia Bay: could work and lots of space for transition with a good run nearby on the MUP, but the river swim might be iffy, and the route that Somersault used to get to the parkway wasn't the greatest back when they were running a Tri out of that area (20km/hr neutralized zone on the MUP)
-Mooney's Bay: As I discussed above
-Manotick Mahogany Bay: Decent for a swim, but getting in/out of the water is tricky for a tri; no place for T1

Any other places I might have missed? Unless they're planning on taking everyone out to the rural areas (like the Gran Fondo route to the west, or the Manotick-Merrickville cycling route south), it would seem that a substantial portion of this race is going to be on the parkways.