Tri Hards

Though relatively small and unknown, the Brentwood Triathlon club is strong. Newly formed and still in its fledgling stages, we are led by Mackenzie Assistant Houseparents Ms. McCallum and Paul, triathletes extraordinaire. On Sunday, May 24, our little group travelled to nearby Shawnigan Lake Provincial Park to compete in the Subaru Shawnigan Lake Triathlon, which was also the Western Canada High School Sprint Triathlon Championships. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the wonderful sport of triathlon, I will provide a quick overview. A sprint triathlon - traditionally - is a 750m swim, 20km bike, and a 5km run, in that order. Shawnigan’s course was slightly modified to fit the location and therefore the bike was 22km of turns, twists, terrible hills, and treacherous pavement, or one loop around Shawnigan Lake. The swim was in the uncharacteristically warm-for-May waters of the Lake, and the run was on a relatively flat crushed gravel portion of the Trans-Canada Trail. We had six participants from Brentwood at the event. Paul competed in the Standard length triathlon (twice the length of a sprint), and placed 1st in his age group. Three first time triathletes, Raeanna W, Mack ’17 (swimming), Shayla G, Allard ’17 (cycling), and Holly CH, Mack ’17 (running), competed as a relay team, finishing 3rd in the high school sprint relay. Natalie M, Mack ’16 and I, Jaclyn C, Alex ’16, competed as individuals and finished 9th and 8th. Of course, the world isn’t perfect, so the triathlon couldn’t be completed without a few small mishaps: Natalie’s wetsuit zipper became caught during the first transition, causing a slight delay for both of us as I struggled to help her. Fortunately, though I failed to get it unstuck, the volunteers were nice and skilled enough to help her out. The exciting and rather addicting thing about triathlon is the massive amounts of adrenaline pulsing through your body the entire time. As I came into the second transition, I managed to drop my bike on the way to the rack as a result of trying to rush. I also panicked and forgot where the run exit was, but thankfully Ms. McCallum - who was not competing - was watching on the sidelines ready to yell assistance and encouragement to us, which was quite helpful. Triathlon may sound scary and intimidating, but it has quickly grown to be my favourite sport. The combination of sports forces you to keep fit in a particular way that doesn’t just focus on one set of muscles. However, you definitely don’t have to be a pro: any and all ages and ability levels are welcome. In addition, triathlon is fantastic because you can compete against others, yourself, or just do them for fun and to finish.  I strongly encourage everybody to ‘tri’ this sport whether it be in a relay, as an individual, a standard length, a sprint, or perhaps eventually an Ironman competition if you’re crazy enough. A big thank you once again to Paul and Ms. McCallum for coaching and organizing our little experimental triathlon club. We hope to continue this club next year with more training and a bigger presence. Jaclyn C, Alex ‘16