Triathlon Community Jumps In to Help Blind Athlete Finish IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa

Jessie Waterman and Brent Clark finish IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa. Photos courtesy of Jessie Waterman

Triathlon is a very community-oriented sport, and it is not uncommon to see athletes helping one another out on race day. If you’re on the side of the road with a flat on the bike course, you’ll likely get asked by multiple athletes passing by if you need help. If you mention to someone that you ran out of gels, it shouldn’t be a surprise if they hand you one of theirs. It seems like lending a hand to fellow racers is second nature to triathletes, and this was put on full display at IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa in early August.

Jessie Waterman, a visually impaired athlete from New Hampshire, had travelled north of the border to race her third IRONMAN. She says she was having the best race of her IRONMAN career, but then the wheels started to fall off. Not her wheels — her guide’s. It looked like Waterman might have to pull out of the race, as her guide, Cheyenne Meyer, was struggling in the heat (it hit a high of 96 F), humidity and poor air quality (nearby wildfires made the air quite smoky). Meyer did withdraw from the race, but Waterman made it to the finish line, thanks to the help of not just one, but two fellow athletes who stepped up and guided her along the marathon course.

Getting to Ottawa

Waterman is not totally blind. She says she can see shapes and shadows, but she wouldn’t be able to race a triathlon without a guide.

“I tell people that I have enough vision to get me into trouble but not enough to get me out,” she says with a laugh. When she first got into triathlon back in 2020, she took to a Facebook group that links visually impaired athletes with guides. That’s where she found Meyer, and she says they hit it off immediately.

“We’re the same age, we like the same music,” Waterman says. “It felt like she was my long-lost sister.” The pair began racing together, although Meyer lives in Texas, so Waterman’s husband, Steve, sometimes guides her. While Ottawa is a long way from Texas, Waterman asked Meyer to join her for the race, thinking it would be a fun event for them to do together.

Waterman and her husband, Steve, on the bike at IRONMAN Chattanooga.

“I went into this race feeling really strong,” Waterman says. She and Meyer discussed their goal for the race before traveling to Ottawa, and Waterman said she hoped to break 12:30. “My PR for the full before that was 13:12 at Chattanooga.” Sub-12:30 would be a big jump, but Waterman says she had “never felt stronger,” and her coach and Meyer agreed that the goal was reachable.

Hitting the Wall

Waterman says the race got off to a great start. The swim was rather choppy, but she says she and Meyer got out of the water feeling good about the effort, completing the 2.4-mile swim in 1:32:18. The bike also went well, and they rode into T2 after recording a 6:37:13 split. At that point, their race time sat at just over eight and a half hours, and Waterman says she was extremely confident they could go under 12:30.

“We had plenty of time to get through the marathon,” she says. “I was like, ‘We’re golden, we’re all set.'” That was when Meyer started to struggle. They had not even run a mile before Meyer started telling Waterman that the heat was getting to her. A little later, she said she was feeling sick. Eventually, she told Waterman that she was getting chills.

Waterman and Meyer had a great ride, but they couldn’t have predicted what would happen on the run.

“I was like, ‘OK, that’s not good,'” Waterman says. At that point, they were running 7:45 miles — a pace Waterman was thrilled to be holding — and Meyer said they needed to slow down. The pair discussed their options. Just 10 miles into the run, it was clear Meyer wouldn’t be finishing the race, but with Waterman having such a strong day, what was she to do? That’s when Shannon Wilson tagged in.

Switching Guides

Wilson hails from Brockville, Ont., a small city an hour south of Ottawa. She has been racing triathlon since the late 2000s, and Ottawa was the ninth IRONMAN of her career. She decided to race IRONMAN Canada when her best friend said she was signing up. Wilson was already registered to race IRONMAN Lake Placid, and although that race was only two weeks prior to Ottawa, she says she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do what was essentially a hometown race for her.

“I’ve never done anything like that and I won’t do it again,” she says. “That was a one-and-done thing.” It was difficult doing two races so close together, Wilson says, but she managed to have a great day in Ottawa, finishing in 13:25:21 — her best IRONMAN result to date.

Wilson joined Waterman for six miles in the middle of the marathon.

Wilson, Waterman and Meyer first crossed paths on the bike course. Wilson would bike by them, then a few miles up the road, they would overtake her, only for her to leapfrog them again a little later.

“We introduced ourselves after the fourth time or so,” Wilson says. “I rode alongside them for five or 10 minutes. They were quite interesting to talk to.” After T2, Wilson set off up the road and didn’t expect to see the duo again. At around the six-mile mark, a race official approached her.

“A guy came up to me on a bike and he said Jessie and Cheyenne had spotted me up ahead and were asking if I’d help them,” Wilson says. “I was like, ‘How would I help them?'” Wilson linked back up with Waterman and Meyer and got the details.

“I asked Shannon her plan,” Waterman says. Wilson told her she was alternating between running and walking, but Waterman says she was doing both at a good clip.

“I asked her if she minded if I ran with her and she said sure,” Waterman says. She gave Wilson a quick rundown of what she needed from her as the guide, then they were off.

“The main thing with guiding is to watch footing, make sure we don’t run into anybody and to give me a heads up for the aid stations,” Waterman says. “Shannon did great. She had never guided before, but she learned super fast.” The newly founded athlete-guide pairing stuck together for another six miles or so, but it soon became clear to Wilson that she might be slowing Waterman down.

“She had a lot of good energy in her legs,” Wilson says. “After we’d been together about 10K, the heat was really starting to get to me. I could sense that I was holding her back a little. She had more oomph than I did at that point.” Wilson told Waterman she had to flip their run-walk intervals, switching from two to three minutes of running and one of walking to the opposite. Wilson says she didn’t want to upset Waterman’s flow, so she told her she wouldn’t be offended if she wanted to switch off with another runner. Right around that time, an Ottawa-based triathlete name Brent Clark ran by.

“We were walking up this hill and Brent came up behind us, passed us, then started walking,” Waterman says. “I of course said hi to him. I said he was looking really strong and asked if he was feeling good and planning on keeping that pace. He said he was.” When Waterman asked if he would be open to guiding her the rest of the way, he was happy to oblige.

Waterman and Steve finish IRONMAN Chattanooga.

“Brent got her to the finish, so he deserves most of the credit here,” says Wilson. Of course, had Wilson not been around at the 10-mile mark, there was no guarantee that another athlete would have stepped up to accompany Waterman to the point where she met Clark, so Wilson is selling herself short. Regardless of her appraisal of how much credit she earned for her part in this story, Wilson says she “was really happy to be a part” of it.

“Guiding would be something that I would consider doing in the future, even just starting with small runs,” she says. “If you can help someone achieve these goals, it’s more satisfying than doing it on your own.”

Crossing the Finish

Clark (who was unavailable for an interview) and Waterman ran together for the final 10 miles of the race. In the time since Waterman had first set off with Wilson, Meyer had found Steve on the sidelines. He had no clue that anything had happened on the course, so he was confused when he saw Meyer coming his way all alone.

“He saw Cheyenne walking toward him and was like, ‘Where’s my wife?'” Waterman says. Meyer assured Steve that Waterman was OK, filling him in on her struggles on the run and the guiding switch with Wilson. After that, however, neither Meyer nor Steve saw Waterman until the finish, when she rounded the final corner running alongside Clark. Waterman says Steve was filming at this point, and he can be heard speaking to Meyer on the video.

Clark got Waterman through the final 10 miles in Ottawa.

“Steve was like, ‘Oh, that’s Shannon?'” Waterman says. “And Cheyenne said, ‘Um, no, I don’t know who that is.'”

Waterman and Clark crossed the line in 13:29:21 (after starting in a later wave, Clark’s final time was 12:51:00). The result may have been an hour off the time Waterman had hoped to record in Ottawa, and while she says she was disappointed to have missed her sub-12:30 goal, the race ended up being much more than just a swim, bike and run. It showcased the community that triathlon is all about, and it gave the inaugural running of IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa a unique and heartwarming story that will be retold in the years to come.

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