Posted: August 16, 2005

Triathlon: National Post Profile on Triathlete Genevieve Pellerin

Careers of Passion: Genevieve Pellerin: Admit it. There are days when you want to quit your job and pursue the active life that fires your passions. All you need is a little shove, right? If that's the case, we'd like you to meet someone who's made the jump -- and thrived.

IN THE ZONE: "I always knew I would give athletics a shot first. I can be a lawyer when I'm 60"

It's six o'clock in the morning, the world's just beginning to brighten, and Genevieve Pellerin is standing on the shores of Meech Lake, in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa, in a black, one-piece bathing suit. A group of like-minded athletes mill about in similar stages of undress, stretching their calves and windmilling their arms. Even in this rarefied company the eye is immediately drawn to Pellerin. She's pretty, yes, with high cheekbones, blonde locks and a ready, toothy grin. But it's the body that arrests -- a whippet-lean torso attached to a pair of sledgehammer legs and cabled shoulders, with years of muscle layered over a fortuitous genetic chassis.

The body's a blessing and a curse. For starters, it's the reason she's here at 6 a.m. -- warming up for a beach-to-beach swim across the lake -- instead of nestled in bed. It's also the reason she's flat broke. By rights, the Magog, Que., native should be pulling down a six-figure salary by now. At age 28, she's fluently bilingual, educated in both civil and common law, and held in high regard by the federal judges with whom she articled before being called to the bar in both Ontario and Quebec. She should be carving her way through a sea of legal briefs rather than the shallows of Meech Lake.

Instead, Pellerin is working full-time, and largely unpaid, as a professional triathlete, a job that entails 20 hours a week of swimming, biking and running -- the trio of events that make up a triathlon -- and another 20 scrounging for sponsors and marketing herself. She also does a little freelance legal work to pay the bills. It makes for a Spartan life of low-cost, home-cooked meals and carefully rationed entertainment. She won't, for example, be attending the Rolling Stones concert in August, or Ottawa's massive Jazz and Blues festivals. "Not in my budget," she laughs. But then, Pellerin adds, these are only small sacrifices. "Even while I was going to law school, even after I was called to the bar, I always knew in my heart I would give athletics a shot first. I can be a lawyer when I'm 60. I can't be an athlete when I'm 60. I have to do that now, while there's still time."

And it is possible -- with opportunity, talent and drive -- to make a good living. Triathlon's superstars are increasingly being paid more like golfers and tennis pros, with purses for some special events running as high as US$500,000. Pellerin has a ways to go before she reaches such lofty heights. Still, with just two years on the pro circuit, she's already beginning to qualify for World Cup races. That's a rare feat and it speaks to the talent and determination she's displayed from the start. Pellerin finished in the top 10 in her first pro race, the International Triathlon Union's Boston Monster Challenge, an achievement she calls the greatest moment in her career to date. This past March, she made her first trip to the podium at an international event with a third-place finish in the Bay Islands Triathlon in Honduras. And more tests were on tap this summer, with a pair of World Cup races scheduled for July in Edmonton and Corner Brook, Nfld., followed by races in Verdun, Que., and Kelowna, B.C., in August and the Boston Pan American Cup Triathlon in early September.

If talent has always been there for Pellerin -- she was a provincial-level gymnast by the age of 14 and a varsity swimmer at the University of Ottawa -- so have the drive and the desire to test herself against the finest athletes in the world. "No one could understand why I would put off my legal career for athletics, and no one agreed with it," she says. "It was a very hard decision, especially since I had just bought a house and had responsibilities." But it was a decision that had only one possible outcome, she adds. Simply put, there's no finish line in law, no way to measure "best."

All this can seem more than a little academic on those days when Pellerin's training is going poorly, or when she wants to buy something she can't afford. Indeed, on the bad days her law degree is less a comfort or safety net than a rebuke that mocks her choices and saps her resolve. She rallies, though. She always does. And so she dons her bathing cap, does a few last-minute stretches and dives in. Meech Lake is a cool, four-kilometre swim beach to beach. Pellerin completes it in a 50-minute sprint.

Material reprinted with the express permission of: “National Post Company”, a CanWest Partnership.