It isn’t just that Jonathan Hood’s second race was a triathlon. It’s that it was the triathlon — the Ironman. Maybe you’ve heard of it? In 2012, Hood went from a casual cyclist and runner to completing, in one go, a 3.86-km swim, a 180.25-km bicycle ride and a 42.2-km run in Mont-Tremblant, Que. He finished in 12 hours and 40 minutes, and afterwards he had to throw out his shirt. “It was covered in Gatorade and dirt and sweat all the way through,” says Hood. “It was disgusting.”
Now, the 38-year-old competition lawyer is a regular marathoner, already training to tackle another Ironman in 2017. “When I’m 40, I want to see what I can push myself to do,” he says. The training is intense. He rides his bike to work and does longer trips on weekends. And each week, he runs three times, fits in one session of yoga and at least two gym workouts (luckily there’s a GoodLife in his office building). But . . . how? Well, working at the Department of Justice helps.
“From a competition-law perspective, you can’t ask for a better place to work,” he says. “We get all the interesting cases, while at the same time, it does allow us to pursue other interests outside of work. I couldn’t do all this if I was on Bay Street full time.”
He knows this well. Hood used to work at McMillan LLP, and his wife, Mary Paterson, is a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. Working at the Department of Justice means Hood has enough time outside work to take care of their seven-year-old daughter and train. But it’s still a sacrifice.
“People ask me, ‘Why do you do it? Do you think you’re going to live forever by doing this stuff?’ And I just say, ‘No. I do it precisely because I’m not going to live forever.’”
Jonathan Hood
Department of Justice, Competition Bureau Legal Services
This story is from our Winter 2015 issue.
Photography by Daniel Ehrenworth. Hair and makeup by Shelbie Vermette.