Corvin has been on the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse triathlon club team all four years of college now. He has wanted to go to the national championships but it has never been a convenient location. As a club, there isn’t much funding which also makes this challenging. This year it was held in Gulfport, Mississippi. This is a 17 plus hour drive one way. Corvin was determined and as the team treasurer found money to make it happen. Uniforms were ordered and a plan was made. This was held one week after spring break. Athletes would have to skip a few classes. Ultimately 9 athletes signed up.
To make all this work, I offered some help to Corvin and the team. First at the end of spring break (which Corvin was in St. Louis For), he would switch cars with me driving back to school with my RAV4 pulling our utility trailer. Then on Wednesday after class, a group of 4 drove to St. Louis with Corvin and all of their bikes. This would break up the drive a little. Thursday morning before work, I set out to making breakfast. All the while Coatrack sat in laps getting attention.
Thursday morning, they took off to the race to get there with a little time to relax and take things in. On Friday morning, Danelle and I took Corvin’s car and drove nearly 11 hours down near Gulfport, MS. We found a hotel/casino on the gulf to spend the night. As a bonus, being about 40 minutes from Gulfport, it was cheap.
Saturday morning, we were up like old people and drove to Gulfport.
We made an extra trip back to the car cause it was much colder than we expected that morning. With my flannel, I was still chilled, but would make it. We eventually found Corvin walking about along with the rest of the team. They were in race mode and had no “support” there. Nobody had a phone and they were quite grateful that we offered to capture a team photo. It took a few tries to get everybody together.
The race started off slow for us. The athletes were all lined up on a pier. The very competitive people all started in the water together for the first 100. After that, they started one after another in a self organized line based on perceived performance. I wish I had a better photo to show but a zoomed in cell phone photo doesn’t do it justice. What I can show is a map of the race course. Keep in mind, the events from top to bottom: swim 1500 meters, bike 40 kilometers, run 10 kilometers.
Using the top panel of the image above, they are on the pier, swim out to a buoy, towards the beach a little, and back a little before swimming into the beach. The water is not very deep once you start coming back. At least half of the swim back to shore had athletes making Baywatch style running through the water. We got photos of everybody except for Corvin. While we knew he would start towards the back, it was almost the end of the swim and we were quite worried. The wind picked up during the swim and we could see some rough water. When we finally saw him walking through the rough water to shore, we were quite relieved. We knew from this point forward, he had a very high chance of finishing.
Off to the bikes. We grabbed a photo of the transition area with all of the bikes. It gives a perspective of the 1,140 people signed up to race!
Biking was 2 laps of ~20 kilometers. We captured every La Crosse athlete at least once. The run was great to watch. The city has a large walkway to go from the beach area to the city. They used this to get the runners over the main road and made for great viewing.
After the event, the team spent time together enjoying the aftermath of a successful event. On the other hand, Danelle and I were feeling the clock. Corvin and I went to the rental house and picked up our trailer. What seemed to be an hour later, we were starting to load up bikes to go back to the rental. Eventually we had all the bikes cleaned and loaded on the trailer. Danelle and I had eaten very little and she was a bit on edge. She got a bowl of ice cream and we headed out back to St. Louis. The team was going to leave on Sunday and make a one day drive back for school. Pulling the trailer is much slower, so we swapped cars and did it in 2 parts. Back on the road, Danelle and I worked through audio books and general conversation. We arrived in St. Louis around 1 am Sunday morning.
I was up at 5:45am and got dressed quietly. Then I left for a 15 hour round trip drive to take the bikes back to La Crosse for the team. When I got to La Crosse, Corvin’s roommate Austin was there to help me unload bikes into their house. I thanked him and immediately headed back to St. Louis.
On the ride home somewhere on the back roads of Iowa, the sheet of plywood I used to distribute weight on the trailer caught the wind and blew up. I didn’t realize until I got home that it bent my canoe rack when it hit. My trailer tires were improperly inflated and ruined from the trip as well. All that being what it is, Danelle and I were happy to watch Corvin and company compete and provide what little support we could.
Hogan Haake