Triathlon Club goes the distance

I’m going to be honest—long-distance sports don’t appeal to me. I’ve always been more interested in sports like basketball and baseball, but I have to admit that I’m impressed by athletes who are both willing and able to compete in events such as long-distance swimming, biking, and running. I’m speaking, of course, about the members of Columbia’s triathlon club.

The Columbia University Triathlon Club was started in the fall of 2005 in an attempt to expose the Columbia community to the unique sport. A triathlon is a long-distance race split into three parts: swimming, biking, and running. Make no mistake, this is not a race for the faint of heart. A successful triathlon athlete must be proficient in all three events, which is why the sport interests a select group of people.

One such individual is Griff Curtis, vice president of the triathlon club. A Columbia College junior, Curtis has been competing for two years. The first question that comes to mind is, why join the club in the first place?

“People join the triathlon club for a bunch of different reasons,” Curtis said. “I was a big biker and runner in high school, so that’s what attracted me to the triathlon club.”

It wasn’t long after he joined the club that he started working his way to the top. Last year, Curtis won the men’s race at the Buckman Triathlon on Sept. 12. That day also saw another Columbian win, as Columbia graduate Alice Henriques won the women’s division. With such solid individuals, it’s safe to say that the triathlon team is quite good.

“We have been Ivy League champs the last three years running,” Curtis said. While the team is certainly successful, not every member is a seasoned triathlon veteran.

“We have members of all experience levels,” Curtis said. “We have people that have done six to seven iron mans and people who did their first triathlon this year at nationals.”

Curtis is referring to the 2010 Collegiate National Championship, held at Buffalo Springs Lake on April 17 in Lubbock, Texas. Last year’s nationals were a success for both the team and for individuals. The men’s team finished in 25th and Henriques finished second overall in the women’s division. This year, the Columbia triathlon team didn’t finish as well as it did last year, with the men’s team taking 36th overall. Russell Ericksen finished 90th overall for Columbia with a time of 2:07:44, and Curtis finished third on his team and 229th overall, with a time of 2:24:13.

“It was probably one of the toughest courses I have ever been to,” Curtis said. “It went really well—we had a lot of newcomers as well as veterans, and we all did pretty well.”

Nationals marked the end of the season, but that doesn’t mean the end of club activity. With summer just around the corner, the members will continue to complete their workouts in preparation for four to five races in the fall.

“We have a coach that designs workouts for us, for all different levels. We have three, four team practices a week and one, two coach practices a month,” Curtis said. “There will be a group of us training here in New York over the summer.”

The club normally gets together on Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. at the Sundial for bike rides, and on Sundays at 9 a.m. at Uris Pool. While I will definitely be here over the summer, I unfortunately will not be training along with them. I might change my mind if they added jet skis, motorcycles, and sports cars into the mix, but that’s for another column.

Bart Lopez is a Columbia College junior majoring in economics-mathematics.
sports@columbiaspectator.com