I use the west leg of the IM Ottawa bike course to get to my favourite bike routes north of the city in the non snow season, and it was all passable from the swim location to Island park bridge, and then east of there it is crack laden stretch of around 3 km. Now the section west of Island park is literally a war zone of construction with light rail being put in beside the road. There are still 4.5 months to go so hopefully some of that is sorted out and they only need two lanes for riders which is all there is right now for cars (it will be closed to cars). I hope the section east of Island park before downtown is paved though !
It seems a bit complicated because the light rail construction is City of Ottawa but the paving of the roads is under National Capital Commission. I suppose as long at there are two lane passable it is all good for the bike course.
The section on Carling Ave to the Ottawa river parkway out of the swim start is also a pothole/construction disaster. Hopefully Mayor Sutcliffeâs team can prioritize re paving that section of Carling Ave. Every time I drive through there, I think I will bottom out my car front wheel with Kandahar minefield size potholes
A few of my friends were out at Brittannia BayâŚitâs
Ok thatâs better, however, the pavement from Island park to Parliament hill is still pretty darn shoddy. There will be many launched water bottles!!!
how is 2000 people riding at 20-60kph a comparison with little kids on the same road. Regardless, probably good for people to secure their bottles for the sections with the transverse cracks. With one way bike traffic from swim to Island park things will be much better through the area where all the construction is going on anyway, which IS good news.
The good news for rolling resistance aficionados is that instead of doing Queen Elizabeth and then hopping over at Bank, we do an out and back 3x on Col By all the way to Hoggâs Back, which arguably has the nicest paved roads of the set.
I posted the route in the other thread, but given that it fell out of the Triathlon forum (into Races), most of the folks in this thread arenât in the other one.
This part of the course is interesting! I am not sure why they are closing two bridges for that much time just to do a few km on the Quebec side when they can just have out and back riding in front of Parliament Hill
I suspect its so they can have us see parliament hill from all the vantage points. T2 has the finish line with a good vantage point of the hill. The run has us circling the Hill and even climbing it from the river.
Thankfully we only have to do it twice - the locks at 4k, and the hill itself at 40km - thereâs a turnaround at Confederation
Though if youâre going to go into Gatineau, we could at least do the park once. Though I suspect with the general trend of flatter races being the ones that continue to sell, that this much elevation isnât practical. But for a world championships⌠(I continue to hope :))
That is looking like an awesome run course (glad I am not doing it hahaâŚput all my marbles in qualification attempt for Marbella vs spreading my energy towards full IM training and associated risk). I need to figure out where I want to volunteer on the run courseâŚI know on the race weekend I will kick myself for withdrawing from the full as now I am already having remorse!!!
Dev - I was going to ask with all the enthusiasm about the race whether you were having 2nd thoughts about your decision to withdraw.
From the Big Kahuna challenge, youâre still 15% higher volume than I am YTD, so you certainly have the volume to jump into an IM.
(I kid - we all have goals weâre trying to hit, and this means passing on other cool stuff that we also want to do. The flip side to this is that between this IM and trying to KQ on the 2026 cycle, I have no room for trying to hit Marbella)
Also, Chaudiere bridge will be closed anyways. Cars coming from Gatineau would arrive at the Parkway with a race going on and nowhere to go. This way they can reduce some of the traffic on Wellington.
Same with Alexandra bridge.
People will want to nail their tire pressures for this race if they are trying to balance performance and comfort.
Iâm doing the same. Attempting to qualify for Marbella at Tremblant and volunteering in Ottawa for this year.
The fact that the CHEO ride added a branch into Gatineau gives me hope that Ironman Ottawa will eventually do the same (would make me much more interested in the race).
Iâm wondering if they wanted to land the race first and try to get NCC to cooperate on Gatineau Park later
Well yes, my volume is more than sufficient for Ironman, but my volume is through lots of shorter workouts. I am not sure my back can mechanically deal well with 5.5 hrs riding largely in aero followed by ANY running forget about a 4.5-hrs shuffle. Right now I have a simple routine. Swim every day and jog 20-30 min after and 3x per week get on the trainer at night. On weekends, run 50-70 min in the morning and then XC ski 2-3 hrs in the afternoon, and when snow melts, the weekends turn to run 60 min swim 80 one day and swim-bike 3 hrs-short run in afteroon. Mainly its a lot of swimming some biking and jogging. I am sure I can get through an IM on this, but sometimes you have to know what is good for you long term and I think if I have the carrot of IM I will end up doing the longer workouts that will injure me.
I think I will derive enjoyment volunteering and cheering people on. The most fun I had in Kona was doing the volunteering twice versus racing there. So will be nice to welcome people to our city and watch them enjoy what we have here !!! I think the venue will be fantastic
My gut feeling is Ironman wants the race courses to be âeasy enoughâ. Going into Gatineau Park would add a lot of degree of difficulty. It is 680m per 42km loop. Tremblant, Whistler, Tahoe all eventually closed up shop with total of 1800-2200m vertical . If you add one loop of Gatineau park per 90km now the race is a 2000m vertical race. Plus to use the Gatineau Park loop you minimally have 8km in and 8 km out plus 2km out and back that is single lane. Thatâs 10km where you canât drive race related vehicles like ambulances. At least the Duplesis section at IM Tremblant has a paved shoulder on each side so enough room to get Ambulances in and out.
Its also less likely to go into Gatineau park now that they stuck that big hill to finish the race on the run.
The old run course that they announced was in the ballpark of 200-220m elevation gain. This new one is 330m elevation gain - which now puts it firmly outside the âflatâ run course they have it listed on the website.
Donât get me wrong - I kinda like how we have to climb parliament hill to finish off the IM, but each time they add a challenge, it becomes less beginner friendly.
I still maintain that theyâre saving Gatineau for when they put in a bid for the 70.3WC - but I can dream
Strava says 748m - which isnât hilly, but it isnât flat either.
Now that theyâve ditched the bridge at Bank to cross the canal, the only real âhillsâ are going up Wellington to Parliament hill, and coming out of the Rockcliffe parkway - most of the elevation is the cumulative up and down of the rollers. There isnât really a big hill here like youâd see at Tremblant on the 117 or on Duplessis.
