Second annual Rice Pudding Winterlude Triathlon

By Louise Rachlis

On the past beautiful Winterlude weekend, a group of women friends got together again to do their “Rice Pudding Winterlude Triathlon.”

The self-styled event was created a year ago with the following e-mail:

Hello Friends
This morning Kristin and I had another brilliant idea: We're going to do our own version of the Winterlude Triathlon on Saturday February 5th. Like the "real" Winterlude Triathlon, ours will also involve an 8k skate from Dows Lake to Pretoria Bridge and back, a 5k ski through the Arboretum and a 5k run.
The gimmick is that we're doing ours just after the real one which starts at 8 a.m. (We're just too speedy for those hundreds of flashing blades in the mass start, so we're giving them an hour to head out ahead of us :-).) Once they're done with the ski tracks set in the Arboretum, we'll use them by ourselves, and then run by ourselves when the others are finished. So we get all the benefits and excitement, with none of the stress. It will be a collegial activity, which we're doing together. Anyone want to join us?

Louise

We thought we’d ask, but Kristin and I figured we’d just be in this together, two latecomers to athletic pursuit with more enthusiasm than talent. However, by mid-January we had six fellow triathletes on board to share the experience, including Anna and Hazel who had actually done the real Winterlude Triathlon many times, but appreciated our low key approach.

 We now had a responsibility for others in our Rice Pudding group. (The group name Rice Pudding was launched a few years ago after Lynn and I ended a two-hour-long snowy run with a bowl of rice pudding at the Green Door Restaurant. It tasted so good we thought we should share the experience. We invited other women to join us the next time, and long after we’d stopped eating rice pudding, the name still stuck.)

We spent days on the logistics, setting up our start time, organizing clothing and equipment, and questioning our sanity in creating the activity in the first place. Unlike the real Winterlude Triathlon, we parked in the Dows Lake Parking lot and used our cars as the transition zone for the skate/ski/run.

Some of the fit and fast athletes in the regular Winterlude Triathlon skate to their 8 a.m. start, their skis and backpacks over their shoulders. We had so much stuff packed into the car we couldn’t walk with it all, let alone balance with it on skates.

It was a happy exercise in camaraderie and support as we glided cautiously from skate to ski to run. We paired up frequently, and each of us always had company, whether we were fastest or slowest in the skate, ski or run.

After our first Rice Pudding Winterlude Triathlon, we drank wine in the restaurant overlooking Dows Lake Skateway, wore the Rice Pudding medals Kristin had engraved for us at a Vanier trophy shop, and toasted our plan to repeat the event this year when several of us turn 65.

And so we did! Last weekend, we finished our second annual event, and are now making plans for the third.