HOW I SURVIVED A TRIATHLON SEASON WITHOUT TRIATHLONS
through molasses. Still, I was in the water, the early morning sun was shining, the pandemic forgotten. Life was delicious.
A triathlon season with no races on the schedule can be strangely liberating. Unconcerned about committing to memory every twist and turn of the Mont-Tremblant Ironman bike course, friends organized long group rides on routes none of us had tried before. That meant lots of practice at changing flats on roads that Google Maps promised would be paved – or had been, once upon a time. But there were great discoveries, too: long climbs and descents on roads that were nearly untravelled, and without a training goal in mind, I stopped now and then to pick roadside raspberries. I mean, why not?
Scavenging for berries meant going off the beaten track, so I dusted off the same 25-year-old mountain bike I’d ridden in my very first sprint triathlon in 2002. I had forgotten what a great workout that bike could give me. The first time my husband and I did an 80-kilometre out-andback, we were sore for two days, left wondering if we really had been inside Zwifting all spring and whether that counted for anything.
Perhaps it was time to buy a shiny, new gravel bike? It seems every triathlete had the same idea at the same time. I ran into Fabien Grignard, the manager of Cycles Gervais Rioux, one of my favourite bike shops, who said gravel bikes were flying out of the store, as everyone was looking for a way to escape into the woods.
But, for much of the summer I was stuck in the city, working from home, but working nonetheless. And Montreal was quiet. Less traffic meant more room for cyclists, and the city encouraged us, painting lines for more bike paths in dense neighbourhoods and barring motorized vehicles from Camillien-Houde Way, the road that snakes over Mount Royal, on Sunday mornings.
I set myself a goal to reach by the end of the summer: 10 times up and down the mountain, inspired by Montreal-based pro cyclist James
Piccoli, 29, winner of the 2018 Tour de Beauce, the oldest men’s elite stage race in North America. Early in May, with the pro-cycling calendar suspended due to the pandemic, Piccoli set out to climb and descend Mount Royal 100 times – a feat no other cyclist had ever accomplished. I joined him for lap 76 and managed to stay apace on a seven per cent grade for about, say, five seconds. By the time I made it to the top, he was halfway through lap 77. It took Piccoli 14 hours and 49 minutes, but he did it, summiting 100 times and raising $15,000 to support healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients.
What does autumn hold in store? With the Ironman 70.3 World Championship cancelled, just like Kona, there will be no trip to New Zealand – no trips anywhere, really, for a while yet. But the indefatigable Danny McCann, organizer of the Montreal Esprit triathlon on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, is determined to pull off a 36th edition on Sept. 12 and 13, barring a surge of new COVID cases that once again shuts everything down.
He’ll have volunteers policing spectators in the stands, making sure people space themselves out. As for the triathletes, McCann says it won’t be a problem.
“I worked it out on the bike course: if we have 500 triathletes on the circuit, each athlete could have 86 square m to ride by themselves,” he said. “The trouble is, everybody wants to be on the inside lane.”
Abiding by pandemic rules means a rolling start, six physically distanced swimmers at a time, in the Olympic rowing basin. It means no volunteers handing out food or water on the bike or run course, no after-race lunch, no finisher’s medals, no award ceremony.
So the only reason to do it is for the love of the sport. It sounds like a good reason to me.
Loreen Pindera is a writer and avid triathlete. She lives in Montreal.