Tears

In a perfect world, I’d be writing a race report that told you about how magnificent I executed my race plan.  But this is not a perfect world. I survived. And then to add insult to injury, my garmin seems to have corrupted so can’t even give you the gory details of the race. But it’s not all doom and gloom since I PB’d on an incredibly difficult course.

If you’re interested in the event splits, you can see them below (2014 first, then 2011):

Name	Country	Div Rank	Gender Rank	Overall Rank	Swim	Bike	Run	Finish	Points
Holt, Jon	CAN	121	595	740	01:20:36	06:47:10	04:55:06	13:13:12	2257

Originally from: http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman/canada/results.aspx#ixzz38o2b9mkOName

Name	Country	Div Rank	Gender Rank	Overall Rank	Swim	Bike	Run	Finish	Points
Holt, Jon	CAN	1471	---	---	01:24:00	06:23:25	05:19:21	13:23:34	---

Originally from: http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman/canada/results.aspx#ixzz38o3MA5yK

I’ll point out that before my watch went on the fritz, it told me that my swim pace was 1:47/100m, so that means the course measured well over 4kms. So my swim performance was much improved. The bike was very similar and the whistler course has an extra 2000 ft of gain, so I really can’t complain there either. The run amounted to my fastest ever marathon, but was still close to an hour longer than I was hoping for. 

But there were two moments I’ll remember forever from this race. The first was as I passed our campsite for the second time on the bike. I passed the family about half an hour late than I expected. I was later because the Callaghan Valley road segment was WAY longer than I realized…lesson learned, scout the WHOLE course. But as unrolled through I saw my family an something about the way they were cheering brought me almost to tears. It still does. The second moment was about 5.5kms from the finish. There my parents had sat for the entire marathon, cheering on competitor after competitor. It was up on a rise and I know what getting up there cost my Dad. As I ran past for the last time, I got a huge hug from both of them. And that was better than the finish line. If this was written on paper, I pretty sure you all could see the water stains as I write. 

Every Ironman has it’s own story. This was a tough course with a lot of dark places. But for me, this time, Ironman Canada 2014 was about family. About how important family is. About how lucky I am that my family is there to support me, from both near and far.  And about the tears of joy that are sometimes what you need to remind you of that.