Niagara Falls Barrelman Half Iron Triathlon - Triathlon

This year the RD teamed with Rev3 in hopes of getting more participants. They succeeded all right and sold out at 1,100 entrants (including relays I guess). Every course was crowded. The swim course was narrow too. I never swam alone and often got pushed to the middle and rode the cable. That'd be fine - except I kept smacking the little buoys because I couldn't see them in the sunlight. My swim was average and almost the same pace as my IM pace.

They need to space out the waves more.

You had to run up stairs to get to T1. And then, you entered in the middle and my bike was all the way to the right (exit was all the way to the left). It's not like I could just turn right either. I had to jog left to get around the LONG ROWS of bike racks, then run all the way to the end, get my stuff then run all the way to the exit.

DH, on the other hand turned left, got his stuff, and exited transition.

They need to address this.

The bike course was CROWDED. I spent the first third trying to get away from people and finally just gave up. Finally after about half it thinned out a bit. The course was FLAT and there was a headwind. A good portion of the roads were rough. I think it's just Canada. Tremblant is SO SMOOTH compared to these roads ;)

Between the flat course and the headwind I found it difficult to maintain my power goal and eventually I couldn't stay in aero any more. My lower back was achy and I spent a good amount of time upright and I kept shifting up and standing and pedaling for a bit just to move around.

The course was 3m short due to recently chip sealed roads - fine with me - I was ready to get off the bike at 20 miles in. (yeah the whole metric vs imperial thing is a mind bender too)

T2 was not in the same place as T1 - I had my doubts as to whether my stuff would be there when I got there but it was :) No issues finding my rack either.

I knew it was going to be warm but the last few weeks at home have been cool. None of us were prepared for it - well, except 1 girl in our group who smoked it ;)

The run starts out in the bright open sun for about a mile and then into shade. I thought - ok I can handle this.....then out into the sun again and back and forth for the rest of the course. It was kind of neat running through the casino area and dodging tourists. Oh and down the stairs......And of course running by the falls was cool too - literally because the mist came off the falls and was refreshing. After the falls, it was about a mile and a half back to the start for the turn around - in direct sunlight. It was a 4 lane road in and out and the runners took 1 lane so you also ran next to backed up traffic (because of you). They were none to pleased - not to mention the hot exhaust. Did I mention it was hot? I made it to about here before I completely had a meltdown. I passed a few people I shouldn't have and I saw DH who was in rough shape. I never stopped to think that if these people were hurting then I was in the same boat and doing pretty good.

The finish was in a playground and they had this giant mushroom with cold water pouring off of it that every athlete went to and was standing under. It was awesome and thank goodness - it was perfect.


Remind me never to do a flat bike course again. That was really brutal. There's nothing you can do about the heat - except maybe start earlier than 9am.

Canada Multisport did a good job but I'm sure they learned a lot - like don't run out of ice at miles 8-12 of the run. I'm not sure how much influence Rev3 had - but I would have liked to seen more.