Several St. Albertans will be swimming, biking and running towards glory this weekend in Edmonton.
The Edmonton Triathlon Festival is once again taking over the North Saskatchewan River Valley until Sunday, with athletes in a number of age groups and distances plunging into the lake in Hawrelak Park before hitting the bike paths and the running course.
More than 70 of those athletes will be from St. Albert, including Richard Roberts, who hopes this race goes more smoothly than one he ran in Edmonton a few years ago when he suffered two flat tires during the bike portion.
“As I was leaving the transition area, I thought, ‘This is funny,’ so I changed to my spare tire,” said Richard, 69, who is competing in the sprint triathlon in his age group. “Then I was going and I got another flat just after doing Emily Murphy Hill. With two flats, I figured, ‘Ah, I’m not going to [finish].’ I’ve done triathlons for many years, but [Edmonton] is the only one I’ve never finished.”
Richard and his wife Catherine, 64, have been competing in triathlons together for almost 20 years and will be taking part in the sprint race in Edmonton.
Richard has always been into the sport, but it took a bit of fortune to get Catherine involved.
“Richard was going to one down in the [United States] and we had our kids with us and our fun-time bikes and our triathlon bikes,” she said. “And the motel thieves moved our regular bikes and stole his [triathlon] bike. He had to buy another bike so he could go in the triathlon. When we claimed the insurance when we got back … I got the bike from the insurance.”
While the sport has three disciplines, everyone has their favourite.
“I’m always a better swimmer in my races,” Richard said. “I’m not as good as I used to be, but the race I was in, there were 107 athletes, and I was eighth-fastest in the swim, 70th in the bike and 95th in the run.”
For Catherine, she has always loved running, even with the toll it takes.
“As you get older, your knees are the first things to go,” she said. “Now my swimming and my biking are pretty good, but I get off my bike and think, ‘I just have to make it to the end.’”
The sprint course the Roberts will race is made up of a 750-metre swim, a 20-kilometre bike ride and a five-kilometre run.
Other participants like St. Albert’s Evangeline Fletcher have entered the Olympic distance, which is twice as long as the sprint in all three legs.
Fletcher, 20, said this is her first time competing both in Edmonton and in the age group Olympic distance and she is keeping her goals modest.
“I just want to make it through and have a good time,” she said. “Maybe if I can win my age group, that’d be nice.”
Fletcher got started in triathlon thanks to her background in competitive swimming. “I just kind of got bored of swimming back and forth,” she said. She now follows a rigorous training regimen.
“I usually swim four times a week, I run four or five times a week, and I bike four or five times a week,” she said.
Most of the St. Albert contingent though, will be competing in the Kids of Steel races, the distance of which varies depending on age.
Braeden Kelly, 12, is one of the St. Albert representatives in that race. His mother Monica said it’s a great fit given all the other sports he plays.
“He loves to play basketball and baseball and all that kind of stuff,” she said. “He breathes sports.”
Kelly has competed several times in the St. Albert Kids of Steel race, but this is the first time he’ll compete in Edmonton.
“He’s never done the swim in a lake before, so that’s kind of exciting,” Monica said.
Capping off the weekend is the International Triathlon Union World Cup event Sunday, which should attract many of the best triathletes from across the world, including Canada’s own Paula Findlay.
But Richard said one of the nice things about triathlon is the way the elite athletes like Findlay are always willing to mingle with everyone.
“We seem to be a fraternity in that sport, unlike other ones, and that’s one of the things we like about triathlon,” he said.
