So being from wisconsin i know UW Madison has a great tri club. I am curious to see though where other collegiate clubs are. Also if there are any collegiate races around the midwest. I go to UW Milwaukee and dont see too many. I know our cycling club has “collegiate” races and it would be interesting to see if there are any other “collegiate” triathlons out there. Also who would be the governing body be for these races? USAT?
I don’t know of any official collegiate races around here, but I would guess there are some in more tri-friendly parts of the country. But some college tri clubs put them on. Purdue had a race today in Indiana. We tried to have one this season, but couldn’t get it to work. I say, organize one!!
-Colin (UIUC)
Michigan State University has a big triathlon team:
http://www.msutriathlon.com/home
We were at the Boilerman yesterday. It’s a good race in a location were plenty of schools could attend, but don’t for some reason. Our team took 23 people to the race.
The MSU Tri Team is planning on hosting a race next year here in East Lansing. I think it will be an excellent event because we have plenty of motivated people on the team. We’ll also make it a point to get the word out to other college clubs and campuses within a 500mi radius and draw a big collegiate crowd.
When I was competing at CU Boulder there was only one “collegiate” race - nationals. I’m not sure if there are any more now but I think one of the tough things is that triathlon is typically done in the summer when most students are on break.
The west coast has the WCCTC (West Coast Collegiate Triathlon Conference), which consists of Cal, UCLA, UCSB, UC Davis, Sac State, UCSD, Cal Poly, Reno, possibly more, and Stanfurd. Each school hosts a sprint-distance race during the spring, with individual and team scoring.
USAT hosts a collegiate national championship every year, and there is a college triathlon board to decide on matters related to it and other collegiate race-related events.
Dang! You guys are too far away for us to join in the fun.
We host 2 races a year: a duathlon coming up in a couple weeks and a sprint tri in the spring. Not really schools competing at all though.
Daniel
Oregon State
Well, you can come down for a race or two - Cal is working on their race being near-olympic (1000y swim, 19 mi bike, 4.5mi run) distance in February, and Cal Poly will host an olympic distance race as the WCCTC championship. Make a road trip of it and you can come down - we’re hoping to do that instead of bringing a large contingent to nationals.
That would certainly be fun. We already do WF and are looking at an additional race to add to our “club” schedule. Nationals somewhere on the East Coast would be very difficult to get to. I will certainly pass it on.
Do you guys have the race out in the East Bay where it’s a whole lot easier to set up a course? I thought this summer you could make a nutso HIM/Oly based out of Del Valle in Livermore.
Daniel
The East Bay is actually excrutiatingly difficult to set up a course, primarily because of the traffic - we looked at every large body of water in the area, and traffic is too busy to set up a bike course around them.
Del Valle is an exception, but we passed on it because we didnt want to organize a race that far away from campus. Plus, that bike would be killer! The short steep climb out of the lake, the long climb into it, you wouldnt win any friends.
Cal’s race will be out of Lake Anza, a tiny lake just north of campus. The bike will be brutal (sub 1-hour over 19 miles will be amazing), but that’s tradition for our race - you’ve gotta go straight up into the hills.
Most collegiate races take place in a pool, with wave starts of 10-30 people, and the transition area is on campus. Its not the ideal system, but it works, especially because water temps in Feb-April are in the 50’s.
I certainly agree on the killer aspect of Del Valle, since I used the hill as my climb run TT. You would certainly give Auburn a run for it’s money with the “former toughest half”.
Definitely agree on the waves ever X minutes in the pool. We do the same.
Sounds like a cool race and a chance to banter with our Pac 10 competitors. Will pass it on to higher ups.
Now if we could get UC Davis to make an Oly out there…
Daniel
Tucson Racing hosted Collegiate Nationals in Lake Havasu the last two years. Thank you to all who came and raced, we really enjoyed doing the event.
We love putting on a race in Lake Havasu. It is one of the most triathlon friendly places that we have ever had the privilege of putting on a race. When asking athlete’s after last year’s race about what we should do for 2006, it was unanimous that we should do it again. The date everybody wanted was during spring break. I did not think there was much chance of that given that Havasu is one of the biggest college spring break destinations and things are jumping anyway. But I talked to the CVB and the hotels and they liked having the collegiate race so much that they give us the go ahead to do a collegiate race during spring break.
Thus, we are happy to announce that we will be putting on a collegiate invitational on March 25 in Lake Havasu with both Olympic and Sprint distances. This is a great opportunity to race and enjoy a few days R&R at one of the best spring break destinations anywhere. You can enter via active.com, info on the event should be up at tucsonracing.com in a week or so.
Jonathan Grinder Tucson Racing