Travelling 4,222 km for a 20-click race.
That’s the adventure in store for Okotoks’ Bob Wahlund as he charges into the road race at the Canada 55–Plus Games, held Aug. 21-24 in Saint John, New Brunswick.
“It’s going to be a great experience,” said Wahlund, a prostate cancer survivor. “They tell me there is going to be anywhere from 12 to 15 hundred senior citizens taking part in the Games there.
“It will be a great event, I’m excited about it. I know the competitors aren’t there for the fun, they’re there to beat you just as much as the next guy.”
The 73-year-old will compete in the 70-plus division 20km road race.
Wahlund earned the berth into the Canada Games as Alberta’s rep out of Zone 2 last summer, in a 20km road race in Madden.
“To qualify you had to be first,” he said. “It was the first time I’d ever taken a road race, I had done other time events. I just managed to get out, stay ahead of the pack and come in first.”
While a timed event is a veritable individual sprint, the road race puts more elements in play.
“There’s a bit more strategy, you can draft, you can get behind certain people, timed event you can’t,” he said.
“If you get behind someone and stay behind you’re disqualified. Raced event, you can get behind, stay behind and pull out whenever you’re confident to do that.”
An avid cyclist for many years, Wahlund recently got into the racing side of the sport at the behest and encouragement of his wife Anne and his doctor.
Training for the Games began in earnest as the calendar turned to 2018.
Wahlund has a spin cycle at home and takes spin cycle classes inside the Shane Homes Gymnasium at the Okotoks Rec Centre along with outdoor cycling sessions.
“I’ve been spin cycling at the rec centre the past 14 weeks and that’s way more intensity than what you do at home,” he said. “You go in a group there and they put you through the grinder and it’s really help improve my overall time quite a bit, building up the strength in the legs.”
Training at altitude in the Foothills should make a world of difference closer to sea level in the Maritime port city.
“I’ve been cycling in every condition I can think of, in the rain, in the cold, against the wind, in the heat,” he said. “I’ve done it all just to acclimatize myself to the whole thing and be prepared for it that way.”
For more information on the Canada 55-Plus Games go to canada55plussj.ca
