Originally published at: Tamara Jewett Looks to Maximize What She Enjoys in Her Racing as She Prepares for a Full - Slowtwitch News
It’s important to understand a few things when it comes to looking at Canadian Tamara Jewett’s professional triathlon career. The first is that she got into triathlon at a point when she was “grieving the end of her athletic career.” As a former national team runner, Jewett was in the process of figuring out how to move on from life as an elite runner when she found triathlon.
“I came into it as part of a process on reflecting on what I wanted,” she said of her introduction to multisport. As she began to excel as a triathlete during her first full season as a triathletes in 2018, she realized that her athletic career was far from over. During that debut season she won IRONMAN 70.3 Muskoka, signalling that she had potential to compete as an elite in her new sporting endeavour, too.
The other thing that’s worth noting is that as Jewett was finding her way to this new sport, she was more than a little busy at school putting the pieces in place for another career.
“If it was all about the pay check, I could go back to being a lawyer,” she said in a phone interview last month from her new home in Menlo Park, California. She’s moved to the US because her partner, Chris McKinnon, has got a new job at autonomous car company Zoox.
All of which helps explain why, for Jewett, it’s critical to be happy with what she’s doing. Her 2024 season “was a really strange season,” she said of the year that included four DNFs and a top-10 finish at the 70.3 worlds in Taupo. “There were a lot of successful races, but I had some low lows. I was trying to figure out why I wasn’t feeling happier in the sport than I have, and reflecting on what I enjoy in my racing.”
You don’t compete at a world cross country championship for your country unless you are extremely competitive, and Jewett thrives on competition. So, while she embraces the competitive nature of the T100 series (she signed a contract to compete in the series last year), she struggled with parts of that environment, especially compared to her experience at the end of the year in New Zealand for the 70.3 worlds.
“Even though I really appreciate aspects of the T100 structure, it didn’t align with my values in the sport,” she said. “I found the race experience in Taupo more than just being about results. It felt like a rich, full experience.”
Add to that her curiosity about taking on an IRONMAN and it suddenly becomes pretty clear why the Canadian has decided to aim for the IRONMAN Pro Series in 2025.
“I have, for a couple of years, been curious about trying to do the full distance,” she said. “I wanted to try a full last year, but because of the T100 series and the 70.3 worlds being so late in the season it didn’t work out. It’s a big part of the sport that I don’t have first hand experience of, so I’ve been curious to see if I like it.”
“The IRONMAN races (also) have more opportunity to engage with the age-group field while still having a competitive field,” she continued. “It’s a chance to maximize what I have really enjoyed in the sport. Going into my sixth year (as a professional) its something that feels really new.”
2025 Season
Jewett will start her season at IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside, a race she won in 2023. After that she’ll take on that first full-distance at IRONMAN Texas. After that she and coach Suzanne Zelazo will evaluate the options for the rest of the season. She’s planning on competing at IRONMAN Lake Placid (“a course that excites me a little bit more than Texas,” she said), but if she qualifies for Kona in Texas that might change.
So far she’s been enjoying the change in training.
“It’s been tricky building the volume while packing up a house and moving,” she said. “The biggest change has been getting in more cycling mileage. We were already creeping up the running mileage last year. We’re not increasing the days that I’m running, just increasing the volume of those workouts. I’ve done the odd brick workout with 30 km of running off the bike.”
Jewett, who has been a vegetarian since she was six years old, has also been working with sports nutritionist (Rachel Hannah – a bronze medalist at the 2015 Pan Am Games marathon) to hone both her race day nutrition plans and “look at my nutrition around training.”
It all adds up to an exciting time for Jewett as she takes on this new challenge, one she appears both well-equipped and ready for. And she’ll be another woman to watch in what will likely be a very fast field in Texas next month.
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