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The RedLeaf Fitness Podcast
The RedLeaf Fitness Podcast
Finish Line Triumphs with Jason Vurma of Multisport Canada
Embark on a captivating voyage through the transformation of triathlon, as we sit down with Jason Vurma from Multisport Canada. From the nostalgia of Jason's childhood tales to the pivotal moments that birthed a multisport legacy, we uncover the personal and historical threads that weave together to form today's exhilarating triathlon tapestry. London, Ontario's role in nurturing world-class athletes and the significance of community spirit in shaping the sport's evolution sets the stage for an inspiring narrative that resonates with both novices and veterans of the race.
Peeking behind the curtain, our conversation shifts to the meticulous art of event planning. Orchestrating Multisport Canada's year-round symphony of triathlons, charity runs, and bike rides, we expose the complexities of logistics, teamwork, and public service collaboration that come together to create seamless and successful events. I share the balancing act of managing a bustling event season, interspersed with personal off-season endeavors, revealing how each cycle informs the next, polishing the experience for all involved – from athletes to organizers.
For those standing on the brink of their triathlon journey, we offer heartfelt advice to spur you into the water, onto the bike, and across the finish line. Discussing training tips and race day strategies, we break down the daunting into the doable, ensuring your foray into triathlon is as rewarding as it is challenging. The joy of crossing the finish line, perhaps with race producer Jason ready to cool you down (with a hose at the finish line!), is a testament to the community support that makes this sport unlike any other. Join us in celebrating the passion, perseverance, and camaraderie that epitomize the triathlon community.
🧠 This episode and more are available now on all streaming platforms. Check it out on Spotify, iTunes or http://podcast.redleaf.fit/
'𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐟 𝐅𝐢𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐲, 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞.
#Strength #Adventure #Community
Welcome back to another edition of the Redleaf Fitness Podcast, a show dedicated to bringing you stories, interviews and conversations about living a healthy, resilient and productive life. I'm your host, sean Blinch, and I want to thank you for making time to listen to this episode today and, if you like what we're putting down, we would love it if you would follow, rate and share this podcast. All right, now let's get down to business. Welcome to the Redleaf Fitness Podcast. On Wednesday, may 1st, I am sitting here with Jason Verma of Multisport Canada. How are you doing today? I'm really well, Sean. How are you? I'm doing good. I just got back from the pool swimming with Team Atomica getting ready for Multisport Canada Gravenhurst 2024.
Speaker 2:Amazing Jump swim bike run.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I'm super excited to have you on. I kind of had this idea, I don't know, three, four months ago and, to be honest, I was a little bit like I don't know. I was like shy, but then I just said, whatever, I'm just going to email these guys and see if I can get a hold of them and see if I can get a hold of them.
Speaker 2:Just remember that race directors exist because of folks like you, customers, and don't ever be shy about reaching out, because the whole reason that our industry exists is because people want to come to our events and we want to hear from people. So I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:You know triathlon and I'm really new to the sport. I think I'm going in year three has brought me so much and I'm sure you've heard so many of these stories and have one yourself. How about can we start there? Can we jump into your story and talk about your background and how it led to triathlon?
Speaker 2:Okay, that's fair. I would say, like many people in triathlon I was an active kid, lots of energy, and that drew me into I call it the building block sports and maybe what I'll back up a little bit. So triathlon now isn't a new sport. When you say to your friends I'm considering training for a triathlon, they don't say, oh, what's that right? You say, oh, it's swimming, cycling and running. And they say like separately or together, uh, what order is it like? There there's, there's a lot more known in the era that that and I would say many got in. It was a very new sport.
Speaker 2:I'm looking back at some of the posters in my office here from some of the races that we've been, I'd say, really fortunate to have stewardship over, namely the K-Town Triathlon started in 1984, staring over at the at the poster here um, and so as a teenager in the in the early 90s, you know I had heard about triathlons. Uh, I did run, I did bike, I did swim, all of them very average. They say a triathlete is a jack of all trades but a master of none. Yeah, um, and that I can. I can talk a little bit more about what being a master of none is a little bit later and just got into it as a high schooler and gradually sort of moved to some longer distances of triathlon in my university days at Western and then to some longer distances after that, in my early twenties.
Speaker 1:So you must've gone to cause we were before. Before we had hot mics and hit record. You were mentioning that you're um, you're a local to around to London. Did you go to high school in London also?
Speaker 2:I did graduate of Saunders.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're not going to believe this, but I am a graduate of saunders and so amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my parents are too yeah, my, uh, my mom still lives south dale and wonderland area. I'd walk to walk to school every day and, uh, this is before that area was a more developed I guess south and west of south dale and wonderland. So, yeah, there's lots of good country roads out there to ride and this is before the I guess new pool on Southdale was built. So I trucked myself up to either the I'm going to call it Lennon Aquatic Center and date myself Canada Summer Games Center, or to the downtown Y, which is where I got started with swimming, and then the Western Triathlon Club I would say would be the founding place for Multisport Canada in its own way.
Speaker 2:That's where, I would say, I got more into the sport as my primary sport, where John Salt, who founded Multisport and and I met he was a community member of our club when he was in his late 30s, early 40s and where our friendship and then the genesis of traveling to some bigger races, doing some bigger races, discussing what we liked about them, what we thought fell short.
Speaker 2:That's where Multisport Canadasport canada, got started. Was was in london in the early 2000s and it was a group of friends who trained together, race together, and when I say trained together and race together. We were very fortunate at that point in time to have some very top racers that lived in that part of the world that we were fortunate enough to train with wow, who told us stories about some of the even larger events that they had been to around the world and that became, like I said, the breeding ground for if we wanted to do something like that on our own, because at the time we felt that there was a need for that in the marketplace a more customer-focused back to my original point event series that's. That's how this all got started.
Speaker 1:So you were racing in these events? Who was the the, the organizer at that time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so triathlon and I can speak sort of accurately about triathlon from about 1990s, early 90s onwards I'd encourage you to have another chap on this podcast, steve Fleck, one of our series announcers and, I would say, our main series announcer. Steve, 10 odd years older than me and got started in triathlon in that sort of early 80s. Some of the OG triathlons true original ones, some of which didn't even go swim bike run, there were some that finished with cycling, it was like swim run, bike, that's before the order of sports had truly been cemented. But I got my start in triathlon, as many of us did in the late 80s and early 90s. Racing.
Speaker 2:What is now has become the Subaru series at that point in time was run by a gentleman named Graham Frazier, and Graham in the mid 90s purchased what was then Ironman Canada and Penticton and then went on to sort of instigate, I would say, the more mass proliferation of Ironman events throughout continental North America, which is part of sort of the overall growth cycle that I could talk about of triathlon. Because that mid-90s timeframe was quite seminal in that the Olympics was the first Olympics was upcoming in 2000. It was the dawn of draft legal triathlon which arguably one could say, created two similar but yet fundamentally dissimilar sports draft legal versus non-draft, legal triathlon at an elite age group and elite level and sort of started the evolution of the sport to. I'd like to think where we see it today.
Speaker 1:And Jason, just for maybe some of our members who are going to be listening that are really, really new. Could you expand on draft? Legal Certainly?
Speaker 2:So and I guess I'll give my take at least on how we got there. So the difference in triathlon in its earliest days was designed as an individual contest. So drafting, which is when you follow directly behind another cyclist and get a draft, meaning they are pushing the air out of the way for you. That was decided to be illegal in triathlon because they wanted it to be you against the race course, so to speak. But as anyone who's ridden in a group, that's very homogeneous. It's hard when you get we'll call it a very competitive event to keep everyone apart. And this is something that at the top level for Ironman and 70.3 distance races, they still sort of struggle with.
Speaker 2:So at a certain point in time, the we'll call it now Olympic stream of triathlon.
Speaker 2:So that's the kilometer and a half swim, 40k, bike, 10k run, which was the distance that then the International Triathlon Union, now World Triathlon, sort of agreed with the IOC to create as the Olympic distance something that they could fit into a two-hour television block. Even at that distance they found that the elite racers were too closely bunched to be able to have it. No drafting. So that's when call it draft legal triathlon was invented and they allowed the athletes to ride as a group on the bike groups, small groups, that sort of thing. So no longer were you required to stay a certain distance behind the athlete in front of you or a certain distance beside. You could ride as a group, and that changes the nature of a race, at least at an elite level. So, drafting you have to stay a certain distance away or behind and we also have some additional rules which I could get into about riding side by side in one of our events and draft legal where you can ride as a group.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. It's fun for me, being three years deep into this, to start to have all the history come together. You know these are things you think about. Right, I was wondering that very thing about draft legal when it came to be, and then I was even thinking about like it would. It would seem much more like a bike race, like a tour de France type of feel, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, you do need a closed course to do something like that safely and those closed courses are often a looped course. So the fundamental difference that you could see between a let's take our Gravenhurst triathlon good, for example, olympic distance course that rides 20 kilometers out, 20 kilometers back, if that was contested as a draft legal event, it couldn't be contested in that particular area because we'd need a closed course similar to say what we have at our triathlon welland and you would do, and we did run an olympic distance race there in our one of our comeback triathlons from the pandemic and it was nine circuits to do the bike. So if you think about a nine circuit bike race versus a 20 kilometer out, 20 kilometer back time trial, if we're using some cycling lexicon, it creates a different experience, uh, and and different venues that could or could not host something like that that's interesting, so, um so, getting back on, on on on your start with multi-sport canada.
Speaker 1:So you were racing, just to summarize, you're racing're getting involved, and you started thinking about well, how could we run these events? Is that right?
Speaker 2:Well, that was John's sort of instigation of the thought of, you know, running some events. I had done some organizing with the University Triathlon Club in a sort of fun series of events that was hosted between the different universities. Each would host an event. I had done some officiating with Triathlon Ontario and John pulled on my expertise with some things and other folks' expertise with other things to create I would call it the first year of events which was hosted in 2002. Wow, and that's where Multisport got its start.
Speaker 2:Our first event, which I didn't actually attend, was in Mississauga. It was a pool triathlon, so swimming in a pool, biking around the block that, the community center that the event was hosted out of, and running around the block. This was the Aaron Meadows Community Center all the way back in 2002. We also had some what you'd call road rural triathlons at that point in time, some of which still exist in our series today. The Lakeside Triathlon started all the way back in 2002, as well as our Wasaga Beach Triathlon, and that was, I think, my real first event was our Wasaga Beach event in 2002.
Speaker 1:Wow, it all began at Wasaga, or at least in the early.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, that's, we hosted the uh canadian junior triathlon championships as part of the 2002 wassega beach triathlon um, and at that race there was a gentleman his name was colin jenkins who went on to be an elite level triathlete and was actually simon whitfields we'd call him almost bodyguard. At the uh 20 2008 olympics in beijing they brought colin there to swim with simon because he was a better swimmer and be his sort of guy on the bike, to ensure that he had someone to help pull him. More. Like when you talk about bike racing and tactics, that's something that that hasn't really been done all that much. And you do see colin on the uh. He's a firefighter now, as far as I know, in toronto on the olympic coverage they uh the elite guys actually lapped him on the run but he got to see the finish, the simon silver medal finish, um.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that was. That was a really cool event and we also hosted at that point in time the Canadian Military Championships that year at Wasega Beach. So it's been a stalwart of our series and I mean a great venue, great visuals. So that's how Multisport got started, I guess. That's, I guess, to answer the original question.
Speaker 1:And and yeah, and not only that, you've might. So my next question was just to share with our members a little bit about the history of triathlon. Not only that, but you've you've also started to cover um sort of how triathlon um kind of came to be in Canada. And you know, I was thinking about that question, jason. Um could you share a little bit about, maybe not so much in the scope of just Canada, but where the heck did this whole thing come from?
Speaker 2:I'll do my best on that. As I said, there's some in the industry that have been around a few years longer than me that could give the most accurate, the most accurate. So we'll talk about the Hawaiian Ironman and we'll talk about the triathlon scene in San Diego, california. Those were the sort of two early hotbeds for triathlon. The story as it goes, for the origin of the Hawaiian Ironman was there was a Navy captain, his name was John Collins, and he and some other fit friends were sitting around having a discussion as to who is the fittest athlete the swimmer, the cyclist or the runner. This is as the story goes and as I've heard it told you know many times. And so at the time in Hawaii there were three events and I'm going to think I'm going to get these right. It was the Waikiki rough water swim, the around Oahu because this is when the Ironman was hosted in Honolulu bike race and the Honolulu marathon. And they thought you know, if we put all three of these together, that would settle the debate and anyone could do it to see who was the fittest athlete. And the Ironman then moved to the Big Island some years later than that, when it sort of outgrew the original and it was also something that had been done. We'll call them multi-sport races or fun training by fitness types. In the San Diego area that was a big sort of hotbed for triathlon and this is going back like late 70s, early 80s. I can remember some of my dad's friends that had gone to do the Ironman in Hawaii. This is like circa 82, 83, 84. Wow. So, as I understand it, I think I've got most of the details right on the the hawaii piece. Um, that's, that's how it got its start and it was um at least.
Speaker 2:Then, if we move back to the ontario scene, there was a strong growth of triathlon of events in sort of the mid 80s when the Kingston triathlon started. There was another triathlon which we now still host in Welland that started sort of mid 80s, and a few others that have been long since retired. I often joke with folks. There are more triathlons that have been retired in Ontario as venues or whatnot have been retired in Ontario as venues or whatnot than events that exist today like a couple of times over. Even within our own series of events, there's lots of places we used to host an event that we either outgrew or the city grew into where the event used to be hosted and it just was no longer feasible to host an event there. That's a little bit of the the ontario history.
Speaker 2:So the sport, I would say, got started in the mid 80s, if we're going to sort of summarize it, or, like in ontario, after getting its start in the early 80s, late 70s, you know, united states side, and grew in popularity slowly but steadily but really experienced a boom.
Speaker 2:I would say the first triathlon boom was around 2000 after the olympics. Like I can remember attending um, an event that we we now also have in our series, the barrier triathlon, actually have a picture. My wife and I both did the event that year, though we hadn't yet met. I've got a picture of her on that event on my desk, uh, here, and it was the first event that I remember that had like a really, really big field and it was remarkable also at that event where the male, female ratio was also starting to equalize and that was like a big, big moment for us that as a sport that in the like the 20 year olds, 25, 25 year old category, that that men and women the participation numbers started to equalize because early on it was a double A type male dominated sport for sure.
Speaker 1:That's interesting and just a quick tangent on that. Sure, what are the? What are the gender ratios now?
Speaker 2:It's, it's very equal, different age groups. It might fluctuate, but we do still find that I would say that in the 50 plus it is still higher percentage male under that, equal if not higher for for women, and that's that. It's holding true and what we're seeing as well in in running events and I think I mean triathlon has seen a few different peaks and valleys. We're seeing another groundswell starting again and it often starts with participation and running events. Like, if you talk about how many people got their start into triathlon, they did something else before. They did swim, bike run, yeah, and something. Something led them into that. Often, uh, it was an injury in another sport and they did some cross training and cross training led to triathlon, that's. That is such a common sort of background story for many yeah, in fact that's.
Speaker 1:That's my coach's origin story. To a tee, she was a runner, had an injury. Her coach said, hey, why don't you get on a bike? And then everything led from there. That's exactly exactly how it happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and one of my best training partners in university was a top level football player, started in his first year as like a starting tight end, got injured that summer and you would appreciate this, sean, knowing London as you do he was riding his bike down Snake Hill in.
Speaker 2:London for those of you that know Snake Hill, snake hill in london. For those of you that know snake hill and without a helmet on, this is early 90s. Uh, turned left at the bottom of snake hill and there was a car there and he bounced off the windshield of the car being 235 pound tight end, and just picked himself up off the pavement after that and had tweaked his knee in the process of bouncing off the windshield of a car and went to the fowler kennedy clinic for some rehab and they said why don't you consider doing some cycling and doing some swimming while you can't load bear on your knee? Quit. Football started triathlon. So there's lots of great background stories like that that our sport is is one that welcomes people from a lot of different places.
Speaker 1:There's no wow, lots of yeah, and at, you know, I know snake hill very well. We would walk up and down that thing you know, from byron, like when we would walk from byron to west mountain. Um, but yeah, it's interesting, I um, I played, uh, I was a middle linebacker for Saunders and uh.
Speaker 1:I tweaked my knee and had it repaired at the Fowler clinic as well. Um so, um, one question that's coming up for me is uh, you mentioned the triathlon scene in San Diego. Did it begin in San Diego and then go to Hawaii, or did triathlon kind of begin with this Ironman idea?
Speaker 2:I couldn't speak accurately to that. Like I said, those were sort of the origin stories that I had heard. I'm sure if we went and did a little bit of research we could suss that out, but that's maybe a topic for a podcast with someone with a few more triathlon years under their belt than me, someone that got in right at the beginning.
Speaker 1:That's some deep triathlon lore right there. Lore, that is definitely lore which I'll have to figure out, okay, so well, well, this is. This is fun, so let's jump into. Uh, could we have, uh, could you talk about some of the inside logistics? Uh, for you and your team at moldy sport canada? Uh, with what it's like for you year round to run these events?
Speaker 2:it's a good, it's definitely a good question. So there's there's a we're a big group on event day and that big group comes from folks that work with us, that that love events but also have a regular, you know nine to five job that form. I would say that the biggest portion of the staff that that you know participants would interact with on the day, these are folks that often have done our events, continue to do our events and act as as staff for us on the weekends. There's a small group myself, carolyn Tess, andre Chris that are behind the scenes year round and we also produce. So I'm staring up at my calendar here and this is part of the origin story of Multisport. I'll kind of link the two of these together.
Speaker 2:But for the first, probably 10 years, we produced our triathlon series and that's what we spent all of our time sort of figuring out how to do. But, as I said, some of our events that we've hosted for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, the plans for those, over the course of time, as the event evolves and sort of finds its footing, it becomes a little bit more. Do it just a little bit better than you did it last year. You're not having to reinvent the wheel or, you know, cut the, the rough gem out of the hillside. You're you're polishing the gem. So we got into producing some events for different charities. It came out of a triathlon that we produced for princess margaret hospital. This is going back to the late 2000s. So we now also occupy our time with producing charity, 5ks, charity, bike rides, behind the scenes type work for a host of different groups and charities. This past weekend we were in Newmarket closing down Davis Drive in front of South Lake Regional Hospital to do a 5K for that hospital foundation, and so they hire us to do the, the behind the scenes work, and that's what a lot of our off season is spent doing is the operational planning of the event.
Speaker 2:I was joking with you that you know, before we came on to the podcast. Here I'm ordering cups and zip ties very glamorous things that race directors get to do in the off season. Other fun things, like you know, portable toilet ratios of how you need those and where you need those, yep Hiring staff, pay duty, police, and I mean when I say the list goes on, without sort of fear of having that dramatized. It's a very cyclical process that we go through every year with some good hard deadlines to keep us honest, because once the season for us starts which it did this past weekend the pace is relatively high.
Speaker 2:Between our eight triathlon events that we have in our series the Niagara Falls, barrelman there's about another 20 events in varying degrees that we either produce or support with equipment that exist primarily on the shoulder seasons of our triathlons, some throughout the summer proper. So it's a busy summer. So it's like preparing for like my wife's a high school teacher, and so it's like a day where you have to deliver and then there's time for planning, and doing both of those at the same time is pretty difficult. So the winter is a lot of planning.
Speaker 1:It's a tremendous amount of events.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to joke. I have a problem with events.
Speaker 1:How, how do you um, how do you schedule vacation Um?
Speaker 2:you just it's a good question. I'd like to say that in my, in my, my world and I can't speak for others that do this I work most days Throughout the winter. The number of hours that I work in a given day is a little bit less. I'm also an active coach with cross-country skiing. It's a passion for our family in the winter. I do spend a fair amount of time traveling in the winter family in the winter. So I do spend a fair amount of time traveling in the winter to various uh.
Speaker 2:This past winter in november we were in british columbia for a two-week training camp and some early season races, and then those that love snow know that this one past winter was a difficult one. But chasing snow around ontario and uh and quebec and and you know, working as I go. So that's the lovely thing about doing something, and anyone that's been in in theatre, anyone that's been in music, knows that when you produce the same show or a very similar show year over year over year, or taught the same fitness class like something in your space, right, you're not having to reinvent the wheel, you're trying to just do it a little better than you did last year and the efficiencies that you've built over years. That's when they really sort of come to the forefront and you're able to do more. So that's the sort of how we've grown from, arguably a six race small triathlon series to doing all of what we do now is it builds on itself over years.
Speaker 1:So I'll tell you, I've done uh, this will be my third Gravenhurst and I've done Welland. This will be my third Gravenhurst and I've done Welland, I've done West Saga, and so, having done a handful of events, I have to say they're run very well and very smoothly. What are some of the things that people don't really know about? I don't know if that's an answerable question, but like what are some of the things behind the scenes that someone doesn't know? Right, it's like the. It's like the duck on the pond swimming smoothly, but the feet underneath are moving real fast.
Speaker 2:I'm going to think on that one for a second because I'll I guess I'll take our, our lakeside triathlon as a good uh, for example. Yeah, so we've produced that event 20 odd times. We've had really hot days, we've had really cold days, we've had really rainy days, we've had really windy days and it's all the the other. What ifs? And I guess the the behind the scenes is you know what you're going to do if 10 of the most unlikely things that could happen do happen and we like to say that we love producing uneventful events where we've thought about all of those things. Chances are none of them are going to happen but you walk into the day confident that if a curveball comes your way, you know how to hit it.
Speaker 2:And I would say that for folks is that that's what we spend a lot of our time doing is trying to find ways to make the day memorable but uneventful. Memorable but uneventful by that I mean you run by a water station and the cup just magically appears in your hand All joking aside, to my 18,000 cup order that I'm putting in for some of our early season events and you think to yourself oh, that just happened. Well, if you really unpack all the things that have to happen for that cup to make it in your hand. That's what we love to do, is to think about all right, or all the pieces that need to be put in place to make that happen, and the communication behind how we prepare people for having an uneventful event. So there's's not a lot of surprises, it feels fun, it feels easy. So that's when you and when you back to your sort of duck on the on the pond is that know that when everything goes well, it's because of a lot of thought that went into it, but also know that there's a lot of thought that went into.
Speaker 2:Okay, what are we going to do if something doesn't go well? Good, for example, with Gravenhurst, it wasn't this past year, but the year before. There was a threat of thunder and lightning that morning. It didn't manifest, but we had a full plan in place. We called it our lightning plan. It Sounds more dramatic than it is.
Speaker 2:What happens if we get there in the morning and it's thunder and lightning and we can't swim? What are we going to do? How's that going to work? How are the awards going to be done? So that one small thing would be a good example of the feet under the pond and having the right amount of communication with all the staff beforehand to say there's a 20 chance of this happening or 30 chance of it happening. But if it does happen, we want to be able to just be in a place where we could say okay, we're not going straight, we're turning left. Everyone ready to turn left? Okay, good, let's turn left. They say no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. But in our world, what we're very fortunate to have done is we've fought a lot of those, either in reality in the past or at least in a what-if scenario, so we know what to do.
Speaker 1:This is really cool. One of my podcast hosts, Ari, is going to eat her heart out. She loves um. You know. You know thinking, logistics and how things work, and so she's she's doing her first triathlon at uh welland, so she's she's been training for that. Yeah, you know what's interesting is I was I was joking to myself in my mind like I'm going to look at the zip ties at the event and the cups at the event and be like Jason ordered these on May 1st. You know it's neat.
Speaker 2:It's really neat ones that my course related staff have asked me for. Could we have some for tying signs that are a little bit longer and a little bit stronger, Because we found some of the ones that we used last year, which are typically the ones we use for tying just things around the event site had some failures, so ordering some that are a little bit longer and a little bit stronger so that they have what they need. So that's just the evolution of trying to be better than you were yesterday, Absolutely yeah, do you have any?
Speaker 1:what was the craziest event that you guys have ran to date?
Speaker 2:I'll give you two of them. One of them was in, was in with sega beach and I'm going to get the date probably wrong early 2010s, and when you talk about the rainiest day, you could possibly imagine oh, oh boy, yeah. So the setup day day, with the Friday, was cool and breezy, but lovely, and we knew that there was a storm coming in overnight. We got some messages from our favorite security guard overnight saying a few tents have flipped over. These were some that our retailers had set up the night before and it's really windy. So we said, okay, this is sort of what we were thinking was going to happen.
Speaker 2:We arrived at Wasaga Beach at five in the morning, in the dark. It's cold, it's windy and the cliche like it's raining sideways. Oh boy, it was actually raining sideways, yeah, and of course, that means, with that amount of like and surf level conditions, we all swims were were canceled and the amount of water that existed on beach drive was like ankle deep water, because in an area like that, that it was. But and the button that is we. We had a plan how do we change to a duathlon Run starts on the beach, more or less in the same spot. You would have started the swim and there was this moment in the day where the sun started to come out and for any sort of weather nerds out there, like when a low pressure system moves through, it rotates in a certain direction and then a cold front comes in behind it and oftentimes it's the calm before the second storm. So the cold front that came in behind it gave us this brief fleeting moment. Whereaga Beach there were the equivalent of what are called a squall line, like when a cold front moves in over warm water, it picks up water and we could see the squall line coming in and everyone was gone by the time the squalls hit, but it was almost worse than uh, than what we had all day, and then it was sunny by the time we cleaned up that day.
Speaker 2:You know, the sun was out and my distinct memory of that is and this caused me to buy some better rain boots. I had like low cut rain boots that day, but I had all the right right rain gear, but the water from my raincoat fell onto my pants and the water from my pants fell down into my boots. So my boots boots were like in case in submersion water, because as I was pedaling my bike because often I would go and take the lead cyclist or the lead runner out and escort them through the courses. It was a good friend of mine at the time, or, I guess, still a good friend but at the time his name was richardatey, one of our sort of most longstanding participants at an elite level in the sort of early days to early 2000s, and as I was, he was like high stepping down Beach Drive because the water was so deep and as I was pedaling my shoe was going under the water and then coming back up. That was in a couple of really deep spots.
Speaker 2:That one, I would say, would be one of the wildest days for weather, and these also, I guess, link back to the pre-planning, and some of these were the events that we've built our experience upon in terms of what to do. We've had some days that have been it may sound like the opposite of that like cool, really cool and windy, and that presents a different, with cold people out on the bike and gathering, you know, taking one of our trucks out and finding people on their bike that are struggling to steer because they're too cold, which sounds like the opposite of what you'd see in a triathlon, people being cold on the bike. So we've experienced. I would like to think, at least in Ontario, and I would say we're humble about this, so that we've experienced. I would like to think, at least in Ontario, and I would say we're humble about this, to say that we haven't experienced everything that there is out there in terms of wild days, but at least in Ontario days everything from cool and breezy to really rainy that's still summer weather.
Speaker 1:Wow you, so I can. I can tell you probably have a few other war stories in that chest there, but that's, that's super interesting. You know, um from I know the Gravenhurst weather early June isn't. It can be really unpredictable, uh, but we've been really lucky the last two years it has been stellar out there.
Speaker 2:We used to host that race in early July pre-pandemic and we moved it. We had plans to move it to June in 2020, which we were able to then do eventually by 2022. We often got some warmer sort of thunderstormy weather that time of year, yeah, and the June days seem to be a little bit more predictable. That early first few weekends in June, like once you get past late May into early June, you seem to get reasonably predictable temperatures. In so much as that you're not going to deal with a cold morning, which presents its own challenges. But uh, been pretty, uh pretty fortunate. We've had rainy days there, we've had rainy days everywhere. It's just something to prepare for, as, as a participant is uh, what are you going to do if it rains?
Speaker 1:And that's exactly it, and that's some of the things that we are uh trying to get our members in our group uh ready for, who a lot of people uh are doing for the first time, and so maybe, maybe we'll use this as a way to segue into, um, crossfit for the beginner, mm, or sorry, sorry, um, we are, we're, we're a bunch of crossfitters, so, no, um, triathlon for the beginner Um, it is a, it is so much fun to not not only do it yourself, uh for the first time, which I got to do two years ago, uh, it it's so. It's life-changing, isn't it? And I know, I'm sure you have heard that over and over for years and probably know some really wonderful stories. So I mean, speaking to the people getting into it for the first time, what advice would you share for them on their first day in Gravenhurst?
Speaker 2:I thought about this before the podcast and I thought to myself triathlon is a sport that requires fitness, it requires some skills and then it requires some we'll call it gear preparedness and then it requires some we'll call it gear preparedness. So I would suggest and this is what we say to most people the fitness requirements of a gym in general is active and you looked down the calendar and said I see one of these, give it a tries. I wonder what's involved in that. Well, we often say that, for an average, give it a try and we don't host one of those in Gravenhurst. It you know, for an average, give it a try and we don't host one of those in gravenhurst, but we do several later on in the year. It's 45 minutes to an hour and a bit for the like, the middle, the statistical middle of the of the event, and when you break that down, that's 10 to 15 minutes of swimming, 20 minutes to half an hour of cycling, 15, maybe 20 minutes of running, run, walking. Even when you break that down from like a fitness requirement, that's very, very attainable, yeah, very attainable. And even when you get to a sprint distance triathlon, now we're talking 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes of swimming, maybe a little bit more. 20 kilometers on the bike for most, that 40 minutes like the average finishing time for sprint distance triathlon at our races is about hour and a half. So that's, that's a bit more of demands in terms of fitness. But when you think about starting at a, give it a try. That's, that's a bit more of demands in terms of fitness. But when you think about starting at a, give it a try, that's, that's very, very attainable.
Speaker 2:So that's what I would I would say to most people is have the confidence that if you are exercising regularly and you looked eight to 10 weeks down the road and said that sounds like fun, I think I could do that. And you, you know, do some swimming, do some cycling and do some running in advance. You're going to be fit enough to do the event. And then it goes to sort of part two of that, which is okay. Well, what are some of the skills that I need? And I thought about this this morning. I would suggest that and we'll go sort of in order with swim, bike and run, becoming comfortable with started on the right bad pun, but swimming foot right on the right foot for swimming, it would be learning how to do that and that sounds really easy when you say it and I know a lot of people that open water swimming is the most apprehensive part of a triathlon.
Speaker 2:It's not a pool, there's no black line on the bottom, there's no lane ropes, but becoming relaxed in the water. If we were to sort of build the, the building blocks of this being relaxed in the water, being comfortable in a lake where you you can't see the bottom, and if you are planning on using a triathlon wetsuit, this links to part three with, in terms of gear, getting comfortable with being in the wetsuit and swimming. If you do those things, that's going to give you the confidence standing at the start that to say hey, I actually like swimming in the lake. I find it more relaxing in a lot of ways than a pool. It's a lot more rhythmical. You can take 40, 50, 60 strokes and you don't have to do a flip turn or a turn in general.
Speaker 2:So that was sort of skill number one would be comfortable in a wetsuit in open water. Number two it's going to sound odd, maybe, maybe not is learning how to pedal at a consistent effort on a bike on rolling terrain. So cycling and triathlon. It's an interesting one because when you would do indoor cycling, if anyone, if I'm not going to nerd out too much, but if we talk about power output in wattage, when you, if you've everyone's been in a car with somebody who drives like throttle on, throttle off, throttle on, throttle off, you're like this is, it's unsettling my last Uber driver to a T.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So learning how to pedal a bike on rolling terrain, using your gears to keep your output consistent, is another thing that will set you up for a good day. And and I'll get to where that manifests, because it actually manifests on the run If you've ridden, and every hill you're charging up and every downhill you're coasting down, you're going to burn a few matches. You're going to stress a lot of your stabilizers, activate your glycolytic system when you really don't need or want to do that. You want to keep your cycling very even, because when you get to the run, you now have the cumulative fatigue of swimming and cycling and especially in your postural muscles. So that running I would say the last skill is running efficiently at whatever speed you run, running efficiently at whatever speed you run. And if you're able to do those three things and you have good fitness good fitness is not even the right word If you can swim relaxed, bike smooth and run smooth, that's going to set you up for a really good day. And this is not related to speed, it's just relaxation and your ability to then sort of soak in everything that's happening around you. So those were sort of the three skill aspects and then, in terms of gear, just having practiced in some of the stuff you're going to use on the day. So that means, if you are planning on using a wetsuit, practice in it. It could be in a pool, could be outdoors.
Speaker 2:Whatever bike you're going to use, you know, make sure that you've um, oftentimes people might use a road bike for something like triathlon or hybrid. Just make sure you've done enough time on that bike so that the position is comfortable and the shoes that you're going to use for the run. Lots of people put on socks when they go run in a triathlon. You don't have to do it without socks so that you're comfortable, because know blisters on your feet and all that sort of thing from trying to rush, and you know slide on a pair of shoes that you've sort of worn, maybe you bought.
Speaker 2:That week I got to get some new shoes for the race. Carolyn's said this many times to customers nothing new on race day. So practice that in advance and if you stir all that together, the ultimate goal that we want is that you finish with a big smile on your face. You said that was a heck of a lot of fun and I want to want to do more of that. So that's, that's our end goal, and I would say that the advice that I would give leads to that. It's nothing to do with performance, nothing to do with time, it's just enjoying your, your time out there on the race course.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's all such good advice, and, and, and, and. As somebody who still considers them very new, all that stuff is um bullseye, and, and, and, I think never leaves as you advance and develop in the sport. All of those things are just always going to be true, aren't they?
Speaker 2:I would say they're universal between sports, like if you have good economy of motion, whether you're lifting, running, doing whatever that's going to hold you in really good stead in whatever you choose to do, yeah, and if you're prepared in terms of your equipment and different sports have different equipment requirements that that's easy.
Speaker 2:And even something like packing your bag the night before, like we want race days to be to fun, to be enjoyable, and I know this because, going back to my master of none comment, um, I'm fortunate that I get to do some events in the summer when I'm not producing events, and that's typically, uh, off-road events mountain biking, trail running, orienteering, that sort of thing and then, in the winter, do a fair amount of cross-country skiing, all of which are relatively, you know, gear intensive sports. And I can tell you that once you get that aspect of it to be very routine what you're packing, what you're wearing you can really enjoy what you're doing rather than fretting about, you know, do you have all the right stuff with you? And I'm glossing over that without getting down into the the weeds, because, um, everyone enjoys different things on race day in terms of what to wear, what bike to use, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yep Now bringing the focus to Gravenhurst itself. Is there any advice that you could share with that particular course? It's quite unique.
Speaker 2:Quite quite unique. I'll talk about the swim first. Unique, of course, with uh, the jump aspect out of the steamship. One of the things that we we usually recommend to folks is warm-up time for swim. Okay, and and you would say that's universal between any sport if you were to do something and there's a horn and it's, I'm going to try to go, you know, quickly, whatever quickly is. For me.
Speaker 2:It's more challenging at gravenhurst because of the fact that you are coming out on the steamship. So I would suggest, um, to do a little bit of warming up on the boat, whatever, whatever, whatever works for you. If it's a, it's a wonderful experience to take out there. There's a wonderful sights to see. But get your arms and legs moving beforehand, even when you're waiting on the dock. Stay loose, get warmed up because and but the great thing I I guess also about gravenhurst, with the linear nature of the swim swims, both courses, whether that be the olympic or the sprint, there is also lots of time to get going. There is no hurry to be one of the first people around the first turn buoy to, uh, you know, get in a good position. There's lots of times. So I would say, get your arms and legs moving as much as you can before the horn quite literally, the steamship horn goes, and when that horn goes, don't be in a rush. Make the third, the last third of your swim the best part. Take that first third, patiently, get into a rhythm, build that in the second third and then have the final third be when you're swimming at your best. That's, I guess, common advice I would say for any of our events, but Grave at Hearst most especially, allows for that in a different way. Then don't be in a rush.
Speaker 2:Once you get out of the swim to get to your bike. It's 250 meters, maybe even a little bit more, from when you climb out of the dock, across the wooden docks, across the road, around the transition, to get to your bike. To get to your bike, take that as a time to get yourself vertical and don't rush because you can burn a few matches with the excitement of the solitude of swimming and then all of a sudden there's all these cheering people. If you walk or run to get to your bike, that's fine. Don't feel like you have to overdo it and then starting out on the bike, this is something that when you say it, it makes complete and total sense, but it always catches folks by surprise. Nearly every one of our bike courses starts by going uphill. Wow, why do you think that is Sean? Why do you think that is sean? Why do you think that when you go from the water to the road, that almost everything would go uphill? From the water, water flows down right yeah, exactly, yeah water flows downhill.
Speaker 2:So it's almost as a rule that every bike course that we have and I would like to think that, unless you're doing a triathlon that goes, you know, along the shoreline, which gravenhurst, in its own little way, does they're always going to start with a little bit of an uphill. Yeah, so just take your time. Um, same uh example with the bike. For those of you that are thinking about if you've, you know, ridden on a bike that does output how much power you're putting out, um, make the first quarter of the bike ride not your highest power output. Take your time to sort of build into that, because it does take a while, um, to really get your legs under you in terms of where, uh, you know where you are. And patience on the bike, hydration, taking in whatever nutrition you're going to, because you've just gone through a period with the swim where, let's say, even if it's a sprint distance, well you, maybe you haven't had any nutrition in half an hour since getting onto the boat, um, doing the start, make sure you're sort of getting in some sugars, getting in some hydration, and on the bike, just riding steady, whether it's uphill or downhill, as steady as you can in terms of your, your output, we don't even have to talk about that in terms of power. That's going to put you in a really good place and from a safety standpoint, we'll call it a shared road course. So we have two basic types of bike courses those that we would call shared road, where we are sharing the road because it's the only road that's there that's paved, with local traffic On a shared road bike course, just being mindful of everything else that's happening around you. Um, so that the bike can be relaxed and rhythmical. Um, and then getting to the run. Same thing holds true with the run. Many of our run courses Lakeside would be the one exception because it's in a unique place in the world, but most of our run courses also start by going uphill in that first kilometer. So I would say, take the last few K of the bike just a little bit easier, making sure you're not turning too big of a gear, and then when you get to the run, I used to go through this sequence.
Speaker 2:When I would transition from cycling to running, the first two things I thought about was my posture and my feet. It sounds weird because now you're going to a completely load bearing activity where, in cycling you want to have very supple feet. You're not trying to have rigid ankles, but in running you have to have your foot is a lot more. It's a shock absorber and a spring at the same time. So transitioning from the posture more bent over from cycling to a good running posture takes a little bit of time. Your back muscles are now sort of firing in a different way.
Speaker 2:I would often think, all right, I need to get myself good posture, get my feet ready for running, before I started to work into the run. And oftentimes when the run goes uphill to start, you can also overdo it a little bit in that first. You know, call it quarter of the run. It's exciting, something new, different people are different, maybe some different people now. But I would say patience and build into the run, because Gravenhurst is probably our most challenging run course and it's the first race of the year. North Muldrew Lake Road is a beautiful road but quite literally it is all uphill until about 1.25 kilometers, even a kilometer and a half, before it drops down at about the 2K mark. If you're doing the sprint, the turnaround, the sprint at two and a half K, if you're doing the Olympic, it drops down and then goes back up again to climb sort of gently up to the, up to the 5k mark. So patience on the first portion of the run and work in from there. Long answer to your short question. I'm good at those, but there you go.
Speaker 1:A fabulous answer and that's going to be mandatory listening for all of our athletes in our group. Like, as you're describing each section, having lived it myself, I'm getting nervous. I'm thinking about it Because I'm really excited. This is my third year. This will be the fittest I've been for these events, so I'm really enthusiastic this year and nervous is not a bad thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, yeah, anxious would be not good. But if you're nervous, it means that you know you're, you're looking to have fun, you're looking to do a good job at this, yeah, um, and you put time and energy into it and, uh, you want to see where that takes you. And that's a different journey for each person, but nervous is okay. Nervous plus well prepared that's actually, that's a good combination that's a great combination.
Speaker 1:That's it. Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2:That's someone who really cares about this thing and is probably going to do well on that day yeah, and I tell folks this I, I am more nervous as a race producer than I ever am as an athlete. When you show up to a race yourself and all you have to worry about is yourself and your own gear and what you're going to do on the day, um, I, I quite enjoy doing, like I said, events myself, because I've got only one person to worry about instead of 500 yeah, is that?
Speaker 1:how many people do the events?
Speaker 2:500 it's about an average. Uh, for, say, gravenhurst, it's um. So the steamships have a fixed capacity. So with the, the two boats trips that we take, there's a limit to the size for the track sprint triathlon and for the olympic triathlon, and when you add our due athletes into the mix on that, that's an average number for that event. Some events we have have a few more than that on a given day, like the Rose City try between our sprint and our give it a try on the Sundays is definitely more than that. Some events have a few less than that. Some of our standalone events, like, yeah, rose City, long Course, would have a few less than that in one day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a wonderful event. That swim was so much fun.
Speaker 2:We call it Ontario's largest outdoor pool. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that was. Yeah, that was a blast. I have great memories from that one. That was, yeah, that was a blast. I have great memories from that one, I don't know, I, I, I'm not sure who, the, who, the, who, the, what do you call it? The comment, the, the, the guy on the microphone? Announcer, announcer, thank you, yeah, so, yes, so when I, when I crossed the finish line, he had a big hose and he, honestly, that water came straight from heaven.
Speaker 2:It was so well that actually was, was me with the hose oh, was it really what you, what you heard on, who you heard on the mic and I would have him read me bedtime stories if I could was our one of our announcers, tony fletcher. And tony is he's eight, if he's. He's so, so tall that it's hard to say, but he has a really deep voice being as tall as he is. Yeah, you sort of probably heard him and you're a little delirious, and the hose down came from from yours truly.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. Yeah, that's one of my best memories is just how hot that day was and coming up and that hose just brought me back to life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting course around the old Welland Canal. There, of course, not a lot of trees, in an area that used to be more of an industrial area, area that used to be, um, you know, an industrial, more of an industrial area, but, um, that's one of the I guess we'll call it. The blessings of, say, a course like gravenhurst or lakeside and even with saga in some ways, is that they're in a little bit more of a treat area depends on where the sun's shining or which direction you're running. Um, get a little bit of shade. But, yeah, definitely with welland. And that's the same advice on hydration keeping your core temperature lower on the bike, like doing things. Like, as humans, we cool ourselves by evaporative cooling, and so that's where, all joking aside about hosing you off, it was the after when that water evaporated off your skin that carried the heat away from you. That's, that's why we sweat the way that we do so, especially on the bike if it is a hot day you're not feeling hot, but you, that was a life changing uh moment.
Speaker 1:Um, so, when it comes to and here's my, um my final question, um, that just sort of came up as we've been chatting Um, what's your, I guess, philosophy when it comes to to triathlon and multi-sport Canada? What kind of what keeps you here?
Speaker 2:that's a good question. I would say that our philosophy on event production I'll answer that question one part sort of professionally slash, personally, and then more on the personal level we know that we have this mantra safe, fair and fun. So if an event is produced in a safe way and it's a fair event and fair doesn't just mean, um, fairness in terms of competition, it's a fair distance, it's a fair course for that type of event, like a give it a try triathlon, for example, with really, really steep hills in it wouldn't really be fair because that's not a great way to introduce people to our sport. If it's safe, it's fair and we'd like to think that we can produce it in a fun manner that folks are going to want to come back and do that. On a personal level and I joked about that I do seem to have a problem with events. I spend a lot of my winter at cross-country ski events, at cross country ski events, when I'm not producing a triathlon or an event like this weekend, I'm racing at the first Ontario Cup mountain bike race just south of Oxbridge oh, wow, a course that I've done many times before.
Speaker 2:There is a special energy about events and I think or at least I'd like to think that through the pandemic, which was some of the hardest days in the event, like the event space I'll take a left turn and come back to where I am here. I'd like to think that it was really hard for the event industry. We were 18 months of not being able to do anything. All industries suffered in their own way, but I think what it taught us is that events are something that are special and unique, that you can't just do every day on your own.
Speaker 2:There is a special energy about being together with a bunch of other like-minded people, challenging yourself and sort of seeking some level of accomplishment out of that, and I really enjoy that. I really enjoy producing that for people, seeing them go through that journey on their own, and love doing it myself, and I think that the type of people we tend to attract this is coming back to talking about our staffing are people that also love to produce the events because they also like to do them themselves. So, on a personal level, I would say that's the thing that keeps me ticking and the challenge of, as I said, just trying to do it a little bit better than you did it last time and better doesn't always. Better can mean a whole bunch of different things, event to event, even day to day. So I would say those are the two highlights Just creating something that's special, experiencing something that's special, and the personal slash, professional challenge of being better than you were yesterday.
Speaker 1:It sounds like it all comes down to energy, and you know the pursuit of excellence, and just you know how that can be a magnet and how we're all sort of drawn to that, aren't we? I think so, yeah, we all kind of share that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um well, jason, on behalf of uh the members at red leaf and also some of the uh the people uh that have jumped on this uh podcast, thank you so much. Uh, yeah, my pleasure, sean, it was a real treat. And and what are we five weeks, six weeks out from? I'm?
Speaker 2:I'm going to stare up at my calendar here. If we count this weekend as a week, one, two, three, four, five, yeah, six weeks to Gravenhurst five and a half, depending on how you sort of quantify it yeah, and even the week before that we have our Honda waterfront run that we do here in Simcoe County, in Barrie on the waterfront, and it actually has some common elements to the Barrie Triathlon not so much the same venue, but the running course, for that passes by the Barrie Triathlon site. So, yeah, event season it's getting underway and it's really going to kick off before you know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're right there and it's yeah. So this is going to be so great. So you'll see us. We're going to have a group of about I think there's somewhere between 17 or 18 of us plus family. So we're going to you know, we're going to count and we're going to be loud and proud. So again, thanks so much. This was great. Learned a lot today and just appreciate everything that you do, Jason, at Motorsport.
Speaker 2:Canada. My pleasure, sean. We do it because people want to come out, so just remember, we do this because of our participants.