Imagine the skill needed to master one sport. Multiply that by three. This is the challenge every triathlon athlete faces.
In January, the Triathlon Club became the newest UREC Club Sport. As an official club sport, the club will represent LSU and the UREC when it competes against other collegiate clubs.
To compete in triathlons, members must train in the sports’ three disciplines: swimming, cycling and running. The combination of three events makes training for triathlons more difficult, but makes competing more rewarding for the athletes.
Members are drawn to the sport because of the challenge of combining three different sports into a single race. Many have experience in one event and bring this expertise into the club. The competitive desire to master the other aspects of the sport draw athletes to triathlons.
Thomas Gumpert, the club’s president, said many members have a background in competitive swimming or running in high school.
Members’ different backgrounds, skill levels and schedules make each individual’s training needs different. The different schedules force many members to train individually throughout the season.
Through two mandatory practices every week, the club members practice as a team and help each other improve.
“Everyone has a strong suit. So, most people come into it thinking, ‘All right I’m a killer swimmer and I’m OK at biking, maybe I’ll give running a shot,’” said Catherine Flotte, who ran cross country in high school.
When Flotte, who’s weakest at swimming, joined the team, she had to work with the athletic trainer to improve her technique in the pool. But even after relearning the proper technique, Flotte faced another major challenge of triathlon swimming: open water swimming.
In most triathlons, the swimming sections are held in open water environments, such as the ocean or a lake, which requires a different technique than swimming in a pool.
The club holds practices in a nearby lake to expose new members to open water swimming before they compete.
Gumpert said the experience of swimming in open water can disorient new members because they are used to swimming in a pool where they can easily touch the bottom and push off of a wall every 50 meters or so.
Swimming in the lake adds waves and other swimmers to the situation and better replicates a race environment, Gumpert added.
Even now two years later, Flotte continues to work on her swimming to increase her skill level so she can compete on a higher level.
Flotte said that learning the proper techniques is difficult because she must identify and overcome her habits to improve her swimming overall.
While Flotte’s weakest event is swimming, Gumpert and Bridget Rogers, a new member, both had to overcome the challenge of biking.
Gumpert was raised in California and spent his childhood mountain biking and had some experience BMX riding. Even this experience did not translate immediately to the biking portion of triathlons, where competitors race on roads at speeds approaching 20 mph.
Rogers, on the other hand, is completely new to competitive biking. While she enjoys the speed of racing bikes, she said the technical aspect of learning how to maneuver the bike is challenging.
The challenges of training for the sport are one reason that members are drawn into the sport.
“I thought a sport that encompasses so many different things would be fun to do. You can be good and bad at different ones,” Rogers said.
Overcoming the challenges of training for the sport brings the team closer together. Flotte said that the six members that competed in the nationals meet last year got really close through their experience of competing at nationals.
“It is good to know that you can start from anywhere and that there will be people to help you” Flotte said.
The club competes in the South Midwest Regional Championships in March and members that qualify there will compete in the USAT National Collegiate Championships in April.