Australia-New Zealand

Australia-New zealand 1

Oct. 16, 2025,

Hi Everyone,

Here is a little background for those of you that are new to my blog, on why I do triathlons. 12 years ago while playing hockey, I had 3 heart attacks and a quadruple bypass. I recovered well by doing some serious cardiac retraining. 3 months later, I was racing my sailboat and playing hockey. My friend Glen, who does ironman championships encouraged me to do a triathlon. I really didn’t know what he was talking about as I had never considered myself to be a triathlete. With his help I changed my training pattern and concentrated on triathlon sports. My first triathlon in Montreal was as a sprint triathlon, 750m swim, 20k bike ride and a 5m run. I competed in the age group 65 to 69. I was the only one in the group and of course the only one to finish the race so I won a gold medal.

That gave me a taste for the sport. I play in many different sports but it is very rare that i come first and win a medal. The following years I would do 1 or 2 triathlons a year. Eventually I moved up to the olympic category and continued my winning streak receiving gold or silver medals. If you out live the competition, you have a high likelihood of winning a medal. Once I put a team together to do the half iron man relay where I did the 1.9k swim. We finished in the second quarter. We had a superb runner who dragged us out of the 4th and 3rd quarter to finish the race respectfully.

3 years ago I qualified to become a member of the Canadian National Triathlon Team, Age Group, 70 to 74 and now 75 to 79. The numbers in each group go down considerably as the ages go up. There are only about 20 men in the 75-79 age group that can complete a sprint triathlon. We are 3 in my age group in Australia. 2 years ago, I did the World Championship Triathlon in Hamburg, Germany. and last year I did the same in Torremolinos in Spain. This year the World Championship Triathlon is in Wollongong, Australia. We are about 200 Canadians on our them with 4000 athletes from about 40 different countries.

I train all year for the event. I play 80 games of hockey all year. I race my sail boat in the summer and skied 34 days last winter as a ski instructor and as a ski patroller. On the days that I don’t play, I lift weights for 40 minutes and then bicycle for 60 minutes on my own bike attached to a trainer. I watch netflix or chaiflix to pass the time

I arrived at the airport 3 hours early as I had a stop over in San Francisco and therefore had to go through American customs. This usually a drag and can take 3 hours. This time I was through in 20 minutes. There are virtually no Canadians going through the States. I slept on and off for 6 hours and then had a 1.5 hour lay over in San Francisco. Once on the plane, I took 2 sleeping pills, an appropriate amount of wine to was them down and slept 7 hours. I then watched 3 or 4 dreadful movies.

love

Brian