Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Paddle, pedal, pump
Not necessarily my idea of a good time.
First, swim 750 metres up and down a river of questionable cleanliness and unquestionable frigidity, surrounded by a surge of thrashing humanity that could thwack you into unconsciousness at any moment. And obliged to wear a very unfashionable bathing cap to boot.
Next, ride for 20 kilometres along a fairly busy highway, surrounded by dozens of bikes way faster than your own, all of their riders snarling impatiently, itching to flash past you at the first available opportunity. And of course, being an Ontario road, it could leap up and bite you at any moment, causing you and your bike to crumple, precipitating one of those bone-smashing chain-reaction pileups typical of the Tour de France.
Finally, having survived the 20 kms., you throw aside your bike and start the grand finale, a 5 km. run. Although the first 200 metres is uphill, it’s through a shaded, grassy park. Then reality hits - pounding along the hardest pavement on earth just as the day is starting to get hot. Your body starts to burn and you yearn once again for that river.
If it were me, I think I’d start with the run in the cool of the morning, and end with the swim when I most needed it. Of course, if it were me, I wouldn’t have undertaken the whole entire absurd thing in the first place.
The ‘thing’, of course, if you’re not one of those who follows athletics, is a ‘triathlon’. In this case, it’s called a half-triathlon, because each of the disciplines is exactly half the length of the Olympic triathlon. We won’t even talk about the beast they call the ‘Ironman’, which includes a full marathon at the end, and I think also involves a bike across Canada and a swim through the Northwest Passage.
So I and several members of my family had arisen early from our cottage beds and come to Bracebridge to watch this ‘thing’. Why? Because one of the participants was my beloved stepdaughter Alida, who many of our readers will remember from her Uxbridge youth.
One of the things that you will possibly not remember from Alida’s youth is her athletic prowess. And that’s because she was better known as an actress, a singer, and especially as a musician.
But behind the scenes, she was also a heck of a swimmer and none too shabby a runner. And she loved the outdoors, able to hike, paddle and portage with the best of them.
Then, over the last few years, little details called ‘career’, ‘marriage’ and ‘motherhood’ got in the way of maintaining that athletic edge. As you grow older, don’t we all know, it takes time to stay in shape. So over the last few months, now that her youngest lad has become ambulatory, Alida decided to get a bit more mobile herself. She resumed regular swims and began regular runs, and the pounds began to melt away.
Enthused about the progress she was making, she began to think about challenging herself a little bit more. And the triathlon ‘thing’ came into her mind.
Her aunt and uncle have a cottage not far from Bracebridge. Because it was the summer and she was on teacher hiatus, she could take a whole week up there and train for the thing. One day she would swim, another day she’d bike or run, some days she’d do two of the three. For some reason, her training regimen, which she’d downloaded from the website of the folks organizing the triathlon, never asked her to do the whole thing. Seemed a little weird to me, but I have no athletic prowess whatsoever, so what do I know?
So here we were on a Saturday morning in August. There was Alida, in her cute baby blue bathing cap and her competitor number - 218 - tattooed on her like she was in a prison camp. A prison camp with a whole lot of high-tech bicycles.
The horn sounded, and Alida was off in the second wave of swimmers (the participants were in four waves according to age and experience). She was boxed in at first, but soon worked her way into the clear. Without being pushy, of course - Alida has always minded her manners.
By the time she emerged from the water less than 20 minutes later, she had already caught up with some of the first wave - bravo! She moved to the ‘transition area’ where the bikes were, and her politeness took over again as another athlete had trouble getting her shirt on over her wet bathing suit. Alida lost a minute or two there, but this wasn’t about time.
Lots of people passed her on the road out to Santa’s Village - her machine was a mountain bike, not a road bike - but she never once thought of visiting Saint Nick instead of finishing the race. Again, ahead of her anticipated schedule, she moved on to the run.
She crossed the finish line in an hour and 42 minutes, several minutes faster than she thought. Forty other people quit, but not our Alida. She was tired, but it felt good.
So #218 did the ‘thing’. Will she do it again? No telling, but I wouldn’t be surprised. If she does, though, I just know the mountain bike has got to go.
Our Alida’s not big on being passed.
