Today was the Canadian Iron Distance Tri here in Ottawa. The entire festival consists of an Ironman, a half Ironman and a sprint. Duathlon versions are offered at each distance as well as Aquabike. In total ~1200 people competed (and still are running on the Iron course now) today.
In the Irondistance event, my good friend Rick Hellard went 8:58. But hold on, it get’s better. Last weekend he won the Calabogie Peak Soloman an even that is the “101” distance at 4-120-30K. And for all you older guys who think you can’t recover, think again…Rick is 41 and runs a successful coaching business here in Ottawa…www.zone3sports.com. Over this summer, he qualified 6 athletes from Kona and the bulk of them are new Kona qualifiers.
Anyway, Rick did not let his hard “taper” at Calabogie slow him down. He finally got the sub 9 hour monkey off his back last year with an 8:41 at Esprit Iron distance in Montreal. With the sub 9 monkey off his back, one of the goals was to pull off a sub 3 run.
Now keep in mind that in this race, he is running solo…there is no one in the same Zip code…there is no one in the same time zone…most of the guys are racing on “mountain time” when Rick is finishing on Eastern time :-).
Anyway, the guy revs it up in the final loop of the 4 loop run and pulls off a 2:58 run and comes in at 8:58. Congrats Rick.
My report from the Half Ironman
This will be short as I just finished dinner with my family and I am heading out to work an aid station for the Ironman.
I went through a pretty stressful week at work and on top of that I had a substantial health scare in the middle of the week. Without getting into the details, I has cleared to keep training and racing from my doctor (at least for the time being). Frankly as of lunch time yesterday I was considering bailing as I did not feel 100%, however, I told myself that I need to support the local race, I have clearance from the docs and I can always ratchet the pace back.
The swim went quite well…all those lat pulldowns I have been doing have helped I guess. I got out of the water in sub 29 and hit the mat in 29.09…then the massive 400m run to the transition on Terry Fox track which gave the event an Ironman LP type of feeling. After a quick transition and another 150 m run to the road, I hit the road aparently in 2nd overall (now keep in mind most of the swim studs in the city were at IMC or are tapering for Wisconsin)…I’ll take it though…2nd on the road out of 400!
Anyway, it turns out that my race would go downhill from here. On the bike, the new Kuota Kaliber was doing a fine job, but the head of the rider on top was not totally in the game. I guess I was just thankful to be racing. After 3 loops at ~48K I was not looking and rode right into a deep pothole and heard a big snap…YIKES. I pedalled ~10 more strokes and the bike did not fall apart, so I kept going, but noticed a wobble in the front wheel. I loosened the brakes and kept going. The wind was tough and by loop 6 my legs were on fire. As it turns out the wheel was going from bad to worse.
My buddy Konaexpress finally blew by at 82K like I was standing still. But I managed to pull into T2 in 5th place with a 2:25ish clocking ride time…2:27 with the runs to and from the mat. Starting the run, the legs actually felt quite good and I had a goal to run sub 1:28. I held it in check during loop 1 and passed one person and got passed by 1. Konaexpress was up ahead putting a few seconds into me per kilometer and I conceded that there would be no sprint finish showdown between us this year. I am on my way down from my IMLP peak, and he is on his way up building for Florida. Last year, we were both building to Kona.
Anyway, I did the rest of the the run “in control” and clocked a 1:26something on a somewhat short run course that some with GPS said was ~500m short… Not sure if this equates to me pre race goal of 1:28, but I was glad to have run legs, and frankly if I raced “balls to the walls” I would be no faster. Anyway, congrats to all my competitors…I knew the boys would be scary fast…most of the guys who outran me have 2:55 and lower marathons this year or 1:15 and lower half marathons…there is no shortage of studly talent around here!
RYAN GRANT Ottawa ON 410 4:10:26 Men 35-39 1/35 1/138 10 29:22 1:32 2 2:19:49 38.6 1 1:17:23 3:41 2:43 1:11 2 Jerome BRESSON St-Theodore QC 111 4:14:24 Men 25-29 1/3 2/138 48 32:58 1:43 1 2:17:30 39.3 5 1:20:10 3:48 2:53 0:55 3 Michael WOODFORD Ottawa ON 285 4:21:48 Men 40-44 1/22 3/138 12 29:26 1:32 5 2:26:45 36.8 7 1:21:49 3:53 2:36 1:14 4 Marc LENNOX Ottawa ON 194 4:22:03 Men 35-39 2/35 4/138 25 30:58 1:37 9 2:29:16 36.2 2 1:17:49 3:42 2:40 1:21 5 Cameron BUSH Toronto ON 116 4:23:55 Men 25-29 2/3 5/138 9 29:21 1:32 11 2:31:18 35.7 4 1:19:09 3:46 2:51 1:17 6 Barry DMITRUK Orleans ON 141 4:24:38 Men 45-49 1/13 6/138 27 31:22 1:38 3 2:24:10 37.5 8 1:24:50 4:02 2:42 1:35 7 Dev PAUL Ottawa ON 232 4:27:11 Men 40-44 2/22 7/138 6 29:09 1:31 7 2:27:43 36.6 9 1:26:40 4:07 2:37 1:04 8 Olivier MOUYAU Ottawa ON 217 4:32:46 Men 30-34 1/27 8/138 18 30:00 1:34 4 2:25:38 37.1 19 1:32:20 4:23 3:15 1:34 9 Melissa ANTHONY Roseneath ON 87 4:33:19 Women 25-29 1/7 1/62 40 32:34 1:42 25 2:37:21 34.3 3 1:18:12 3:43 3:15 1:58 10 Aron WEIR Guelph ON 280 4:36:52 Men 30-34 2/27 9/138 15 29:44 1:33 14 2:33:45 35.1 10 1:28:41 4:13 3:24 1:19
OK, off to work the aid station for the Irondistance!
Edit: While the run course was likely short, the overall times are pretty legit…the bike course was 91K and the transition runs were insanely long (much longer than Ironman LP)…so I am ‘taking’ my sub 4:30 time 
Dev
