Planning to Race in 2021
If you talk to anyone who did Esprit, they’ll tell you in spite of all the constraints, it was a beautiful event
WHEN I FIRST got into triathlons nearly two decades ago, it struck me that although I loved to swim, bike and run, I had little in common with most of the detail-obsessed people in my newfound sport. I didn’t log my runs, didn’t own a heart rate monitor, and I had no idea what a training plan looked like. By contrast, every second triathlete I met seemed to be an engineer, or at least blessed with an engineer’s brain – measuring every variable, testing every diet and planning for every eventuality. But who would ever have thought to plan for how to keep on being a triathlete in a global pandemic?
It turns out triathletes are flexible creatures, too. If you hadn’t been initiated into Sufferfest or Zwift before the first lockdown last spring, you probably have by now. When indoor pools finally reopened after many months, swimmers found themselves limited to 45- or 50-minute blocks, two to a lane, with no coaches on deck. They adjusted their practice sessions accordingly and got on with it. But for what? “I had this beautiful season programmed, and every event was postponed until next year,” said Jacques Caron, 68, outside the McGill pool where we chatted, masked and à distance, after a recent workout. Caron has been competing in six or seven triathlons a year since he signed up for his first race in
1984, half a lifetime ago. Caron’s planned 2020 season included the World Triathlon Series ITU event in Old Montreal, three 70.3 events – Mont-Tremblant, Muskoka and Musselman in Geneva, N.Y. – the ITU Olympic distance world championship in Edmonton, followed a week later by Ironman Canada in Penticton.
By summer’s end, the only event Caron had raced was Montreal’s Esprit. He’d planned to do the Demi, the half distance, but a last-minute reinterpretation of the public health rules forced the event organizers to cancel all the races except the sprint distance. So Caron did the sprint. He landed on the podium – or he would have, had organizers been allowed in 2020 to set up a podium on which to land.
Caron, a retired Hydro-Québec engineer, is unfazed by last summer’s setbacks. He plans to be at every postponed event he registered for, except those that now conflict with other races.
“I have to drop out of Musselman because the way the 2021 season has been arranged, Muskoka and Musselman fall on the same weekend,” he said. “Given the situation in the United States, I prefer to stay in Canada rather than head to New York state. Who even knows if we will be able to cross the border by next summer?” Who knows anything, for certain, in these uncertain times? The triathlon federation in my province generally has its schedule for the upcoming season’s 60 events set in stone by early December, but in the lead-up to the 2021 season, as the spread of COVID-19 forced many regions of the province back into Code Red, Triathlon Quebec’s event co-ordinator and marketing director Jean Piolé found himself grappling with a laundry list of uncertainties.
“There are a lot of organizing committees asking if it is worth it to put in the time to organize an event when we are not even sure if it will take place,” said Piolé late last fall. Almost all local triathlons are volunteer-run, and they normally host a triathlon as a fundraiser for their club. With so many extra costs involved to keep the event safe, from the purchase of masks to disinfectant, and strict limits on the number of people allowed on the site, clubs have been looking at their meagre resources and trying to calculate the risk of their event becoming a money loser.
“I am working with the organizing committees on a nearly daily basis,” said Piolé. “The good thing here in Quebec is we have really competent, resilient people. They know how to organize a race. They have a lot of experience. And overall, they are feeling pretty confident about the 2021 season, because they have time over the winter and spring to prepare for it.”
They now have some COVID know-how, too. Unlike most provinces, Quebec managed to pull off a couple of major events in 2020, including the Esprit race that Jacques Caron participated in. The spectators were missing, of course. And Montreal Public Health’s decision to limit the number of people on the entire course to 250, including volunteers, meant clearing out one wave of competitors before welcoming the next.
Still, “if you talk to anyone who did Esprit, they’ll tell you in spite of all the constraints, it was a beautiful event,” said Piolé.
“It’s complicated, but it is realistic to have a triathlon under pandemic conditions. We proved that we could. Everything we learned last summer we are going to apply to the 2021 season, so that we can have an actual season with events across the province.”
If the same kind of public health restrictions remain in place in 2021, then at most, 750 people will be able to compete in a race, conducted in waves, over the course of a day. Piolé is hoping authorities will consider changing that rule, instead setting a maximum number of athletes and officials for each leg of the course, with organizers timing arrivals and departures from the transition area to ensure physical distancing requirements can still be respected.
“A triathlon course is a lot bigger than a hockey arena,” said Piolé, “but last year, public health imposed the same limitation on the number of participants for all sports.” Organizers had to argue that a volunteer standing all alone at the bike turnaround should not be counted as one of the 250 participants, especially since that person was in no danger of being in contact with anyone all day.
“What we are telling our organizing committees right now is, we know it’s early, but get in touch with public health officials, start working with them now, so that you won’t be in for any last-minute surprises,” he said.
Triathlon Quebec is likely to find its own resources stretched to the limit. It’s too soon to say if the usual contingent of international officials will be flying into Canada for the WTS Montreal International Triathlon, now set for the last weekend June, and with the WTS and Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant landing on the same weekend in 2021, the provincial federation will be pressing all its trained officials into service.
“It is a pretty big drain on our reserve of officials,” Piolé admitted. “It’s not ideal, but we can’t do anything about it – it’s how both organizations have worked out their calendars.”
Still, Piolé said, they would rather have too much on their plate than not enough. One of the big unanswered questions is, how many triathletes will show up to compete, as the pandemic drags into a second season. “After all that happened last year, all the cancellations, the problems some organizations faced in reimbursing people, it’s likely that a lot of triathletes are going to wait until the very last minute to sign up.” Event organizers start incurring costs months before registration opens, so they need to know the triathletes will be there. Perhaps the vaccines that are showing so much promise will roll out more quickly than anyone is expecting. But vaccine or no vaccine, a seasoned age-grouper like Jacques Caron says to count him in. “It won’t be like before the pandemic,” said Caron. “My feeling is that next season is going to be another COVID summer.” But Caron shrugs off the uncertainty and is planning for all possibilities. He’s an engineer, after all.