Ireland day 0971. Sunday 26 May 2024- Victoria 4

Today’s summary	Up and away just after 4am this morning for the short drive up to Elk Lake to support Rob doing his half Ironman triathlon. Excellent day out and a great result (6h 14m) despite cold damp conditions.
Today’s weather	Rain overnight then heavily overcast with light showers all day. No sun. Hardly any wind. Appx 14c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Elk Lake

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

One of our motivations for travelling to Canada this year was to support our son Rob in his first ever half-Ironman triathlon (1.9km swim, 90km cycle, 21.1km (half marathon) run – total 113km / 70.2mi). The race was being held at Elk Lake, which is just a 30min drive from where we are staying.

That all sounds fine – until you realise that the race start is 6am and contestants are encouraged to arrive well in advance. Added to this, there is no parking at the race start so you have to allow extra time get a shuttle bus from the other end of the lake (although Val and I decided to walk – partly in an attempt to wake ourselves up properly!)

Once we had dropped off Rob in good time, we drove down to the parking and then retraced our steps beck up the lake shore ready to see the start.

Over the course of the next six hours, we managed to spot Rob racing through on the swim, cycle ride and run events, as well as at the start and finish. He completed in 6h 14 min (including doing the half marathon in only 2h 3m – impressive after the epic swim and bike ride). He was well pleased with the result, as he should be.

We gave Rob – and bike – a lift back to the hotel afterwards then went out for an early dinner with him and his Triathlon club group. Everyone (especially us!) was weary but satisfied – and it left Val and I wondering – could we do it ourselves one day? Well we will just have to see. I for one am not sure I could stomach all the training that’s involved. Still, it’s nice to dream.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Elk Lake early this morning. It used to be two separate lakes – Elk and Beaver – but Beaver was dammed to create a drinking water reservoir for Victoria and as the water level rose (only by about a meter) it flooded into Elf so now they are all one big lake	About to start (in the centre)

Cornering at high speed – hazardous in the wet!	The shuttle bus back to the car parking. I always wanted to go in one of these and it did the job perfectly though was obviously designed for people with shorter legs than me



Not good at early mornings (this was about 5:30 am)