Finishing fifth in his first full Ironman race in Arizona last month, local triathlete Clint Dalziel has punched himself a ticket to compete in Hawaii late next year at the gruelling event's World Championship competition.
Ironman racers train for several months at a time to compete in the challenge of mental and physical toughness which consists of a 3.8-kilometre swim, 180-kilometre bike ride and 42.2-kilometre run to the finish line.
Dalziel, the 32-year-old tri-site schools alumni, said that training to race under the hot Arizona sun, in Canada's cool fall conditions, led to some challenges that he feels helped him to overcome mental hurdles during the race.
"We're training in September, October here [for the race in November]," he said. "We were getting snow and cold weather so a lot of my six-hour bike rides that I was doing on the weekends, I was unable to do outside. Some of those days I was doing six-hour bike rides in my bedroom pretty much, staring at an iPad.
"When you're riding a five-hour bike course down in Arizona in beautiful weather and scenery - it actually makes it a lot easier."
Dalziel, who has competed in over a dozen half Ironman races, said that for his first full race he hoped to compete in Ironman Canada in Penticton last year, before the pandemic made other plans for him.
After the event was cancelled it was set to return in 2021, until it was postponed and eventually cancelled again.
"I kinda spent the two years training for it," said Dalziel. "I was like, I'm not doing this again, I'm not gonna wait another year to race. I knew races were going on down in the States so as soon as they cancelled [Ironman Canada], I got on the internet and signed up for Arizona."
While he expected a strong finish, he said he did not picture himself in the top 10 or top five competitors in the race of over 2,500 participants.
Dalziel finished the race in 8 hours, 51 minutes and 8 seconds.
"When I came out of the water, I think I was in like 114th place," he said. "I'm a pretty strong biker so I managed to claw my way out of that and got off my bike in ninth place and was able to run into fourth place, but got caught up to at the end by the fifth place guy."
Many of Dalziel's family members and friends were at the race to celebrate the finish with him, cheering him on along the way.
"That gave me a lot of extra push in the race," he said, adding that half the battle with Ironman races is the sacrifices an athlete makes while dedicating themselves to training.
"You're spending 15-20 hours a week training on top of your full-time job, so you definitely lose a lot of time with family and friends."
It was Dalziel's grandfather's passing about four years ago that inspired him to start racing in long course triathlons in the first place.
"He was one of those guys, that at 83-years-old, there's nothing he wouldn't do," he said. "He'd be on the side of roofs tarring, just hanging off a rope. He was just one of those strong guys.
"The year he passed, I thought to myself that guy could do anything he wanted to, I'm going to do something that I don't think I could do. So I signed up for a half Ironman."
Dalziel is now in an off-season though the training never really stops, he explained, as it's difficult to pick back up from scratch.
Now he's training for about half the amount of time as he would before a race and through casual activities like hiking and running with his girlfriend and friends.
The Ironman World Championship race takes place in October 2022 and until then, Dalziel intends to compete in a few more half Ironman's next season, while also enjoying some local sprints with friends and family.
