Ironman Canada Ottawa 2025

    

Not bad for a 70-year-old, eh?

This was the first year for an Ironman race in Ottawa, and the city was great. People showed up to watch and cheer, and stayed out for hours. There were glitches and it was a confusing layout with 2 separate transitions, with the swim about 8 miles from the bike and run start points, but the volunteers and spectators were enthusiastic, plentiful, and great.

I finally made it to (the grass next to) the podium, by outwalking 2 slower guys to finish 5th in my age group, which made me eligible for an award, a piece of plastic in the shape of Ontario. Which I will treasure, as I think this will be my last full IM race. It just takes too much time to train and eliminates too much else of life.

I had a great swim and a pretty good bike. The swim map is amazing, basically straight lines with some adjustments to get around other swimmers. The bike was hard because of a stiff wind from the west, so half the time we were with the wind and half the time against, but you never make up what you lose going into the wind when it's at your back. But with the help of the volunteers at the aid stations, I kept replenishing my hydration and nutrition and did all 180 km (112 mi) without ever once getting off my bike, I just kept moving. I was in third place in my division through the bike, but just couldn't run. I have no idea how, but I hurt my hip during taper the Wednesday before the race, and it was too painful to run, but I could walk OK. I wound up walking with 3 others and we collectively pulled ourselves to finishes well within the 17 hour cutoff.

Swim 1:28:10

T1 14:07

Bike 7:15:26

T2 13:35

Run 6:57:38

Overall16:08:57

Division 5/7 (but we had 2 DNFs and 1 DNS, so give me credit for 5/10?), gender 1272/1331, overall 1782/1895 (I think the total participants by gender and overall are correct, but they weren't on the results page and derived from looking at the last finishers). I was 19 minutes slower than IM Arizona in 2021 but got 3028 points by being in the 70-74 age group (or finishing in the top 5) compared with 1812 points in 2021. Results are here (you need to search for 2025, the only year so far, with my name or my bib number, which was 113) and pictures are here.

Here's the finisher line video (if it doesn't start at 8:10:10, move the cursor to start there). If you look closely, you can see me think about running down the red carpet. I take one step, it hurts, and I immediately stop and start high-fiving people down the finish chute. Much better, and much more fun.

 

Matt Levine Addresses My (and someone else's) Question

I was one of the two readers of Money Stuff who asked him this question, and we got it answered today:

No-crypto index

We talked last week about how (1) an increasing number of US public companies are pivoting to crypto treasury strategies, (2) those companies are starting to show up in stock indexes and, thus, in the portfolios of index funds, and (3) therefore many boring conventional diversified stock retirement funds actually have some crypto. I thought this was fine, writing:

The simplest and laziest way to get sort-of-index-ish exposure to crypto is to own the total US stock market, because the stock market now includes an ever-growing supply of crypto treasury companies. You might not want crypto in your stock index fund — Vanguard doesn’t want crypto in its stock index funds — but the whole point of an index fund is that you don’t want to invest in what you want! (Or in what a fund manager wants.) You don’t trust yourself (or your fund manager) to want the right things. You want to invest in what the market wants, and what the market wants is crypto.

That view — “invest in the market portfolio” — is pretty standard, but also a bit extreme. The more normal version of it is something like “your default exposure to financial assets should be roughly proportional to their market weights, but if you have some reason to deviate from the market weights, go right ahead.” My assumption is that most normal people don’t have any particularly good reason to pick one investment over another — if you are not a professional investment manager, you probably have better things to do with your time than deeply understanding financial markets — but some people do, or at least, have good enough reasons. 

For instance, a classic reason is what is sometimes called “ESG,” environmental, social and governance investing. If you think “I do not want to make particular stock-picking decisions, but I also do not want to own coal companies because global warming is bad,” there are investment vehicles for you. There are even indexes; there are indexes that are approximately “the S&P 500, but ESG,” for people who want to invest passively in the broad market portfolio but who also have ESG commitments.

Crypto is quite popular these days, but it’s also pretty obvious that lots of people do want to exclude it from their portfolios. (My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Allison Schrager has a column today titled “Bitcoin in Your 401(k)? That’s Not a Risk I Would Take.”) And so there’s a natural question that at least two readers have emailed me to ask: “Is there a broad stock market index that excludes crypto?” (That is: An index that excludes crypto treasury companies that are meant to be essentially pots of crypto wrapped in public-company stock, and also maybe crypto miners or whatever.)

As far as I can tell the answer is “no, but there should be.” Some people want to own the entire stock market, and the stock market these days includes a certain amount of Bitcoin in a fake mustache. Other people want to own the entire stock market except the bit of it that is crypto. Those people would buy that, so someone should sell it to them.

This is almost (but not quite) as cool as the time my law school girlfriend, years later, was a caller on Car Talk and got advice on what car she should get to replace her VW Dasher.

Could be the best thing that happened in 1967

 

From the December 3, 1967, Ed Sullivan Show:

I Do a Podcast (well, a Substack but basically the same thing)

Ben Samuels has a Substack and is doing a series of podcasts with former Members of Congress, asking us, "How much are things really worse today?" Ben, who is from St. Louis, dropped Jeff Smith's name (my daughter took his class at Wash U. back in the 2000's), which was enough to get me to agree to do a session with Ben. It  was fun and is now up and available - click here or below, and let me know what you think. It's like a Congress to Campus session without having to take a college class:

Sam Coppersmith (D-AZ): DC, the NFL, and democracy by Ben Samuels

Listen to his thoughts on serving as a one-term Congressman and why "all politics is local" isn't true anymore.

Read on Substack

Cactus Man Triathlon 2025

I thought that aging up this year to the 70-74 age group would move me on to (or at least closer) to the podium, but this is a very popular triathlon among the old guys, and 4 others were just too fast for me. I had a nice day overall, but of course, there were issues. I had trouble sighting the first turn buoy on the swim, so went astray and swam longer than necessary, and had trouble removing my wetsuit and a problem with one bicycle shoe in T1. But the bike ride went well, and I thought I did well on the run - especially as we all think it was a quarter-mile too long.

I wound up 3 minutes longer than last year, and instead of finishing 12/13 AG, I was 5/7. So I guess that's an improvement. But the weather was great, it's a fun race with lots of friends, and everybody else from Tri Scottsdale did very well.

Swim 33:33.5 (wetsuit)

T1 6:38.1 (wetsuit difficulties, bike shoe issue)
Bike 1:06:57.0 (under 20 miles)
T2 3:38.9
Run 1:12:38.5 (6.5 mi?)
Overall 3:03:28.3
Division 5/7, gender 162/192, overall 210/256

My results here, full results here, and photos here.