Club Triathlon Team Places Third at Oktoberfest Triathlon

Now having a “Club Sport” title, the CSM Club Triathlon team has projected success due to a much larger pool of teammates and achievements at their past two races.

“We have had two races so far this semester. The first one was great. We had a high turnout and were just getting ready for the season,” says secretary and second year competitor Madison Scott.

Their first triathlon back in August was the Boulder Sunset, an Olympic distance triathlon. Olympic distance consists of a grueling 1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike ride, and a 10 km run.

“The second race was much better. We actually placed third,” said Scott. “And we beat Air Force!” This second triathlon in Longmont, Colorado, was the Oktoberfest Triathlon, a sprint distance triathlon consisting of a 750 meter swim, 12 mile bike ride, and 5 km run.

“This was the first time in team history that we have placed. We normally don’t have enough people to be in the running at all. We had by far the most people and the most enthusiastic people on the podium,” treasurer and race director Jeffrey Nichols said.

“We had 20 people race. There are probably 20-30 people on the team, which is way bigger than past years so I’m super excited” team president Sam Smith states. “We have had a team for four years. But this is our first year being a club sport. Companionship on the team is at an all-time high this year. We’ve always been close, but we’re growing this year. We’ll do workouts together during the week and then after races we’ll sometimes have a BBQ which is a lot of fun.”

Preparing and training for these intense races requires a lot of dedication and hard work.

“During the summer it’s a lot easier to train because I didn’t have homework. I do a couple swims a week, a couple runs a week, and a couple bikes a week. Obviously during school though it’s much harder, but I like to do whatever I can get in,” Scott says.

“I generally do about 15 hours a week of training. It’s probably half biking and the other part run and swim. A lot of my runs are higher intensity runs. Coming into a race week, I’ll do some hard workouts at the beginning and then start to taper off in the end,” Smith said.

The team’s next race is the Olympic distance Pumpkinman Triathlon in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 24.

“It’s a hard race but a fun once so we are looking forward to it. The swim is beautiful, and in the biking part we gain over 3500 feet of elevation and the run is flat,” Scott said.