The Dartmouth triathlon club offers coaching, training plans, and camaraderie year-round—including a popular spring break trip to Florida, which was canceled this year due to the coronavirus. To stay connected remotely this spring, and despite the lack of races on the horizon for the foreseeable future, the team has been convening virtually each Wednesday for strength workouts on Zoom, logging workouts as a club in the fitness app Strava, and assigning workout buddies to each other every week to stay motivated. “It’s been so comforting being on Zoom calls with teammates, a reminder that this community is so strong and is here to support each of us,” says captain Andrea Sedlacek ’20.

The club’s 65-person roster is full of former high school athletes, but hardly any of them had completed a triathlon (a single race that involves swimming, biking, and running) before coming to Dartmouth.

“I find that having three different sports in which to train helps to keep me entertained, motivated, and uninjured,” says Colin Goodbred ’21. “Teammates are able to mentor each other based on the strengths that they come in with and each person always has clear ways they can improve.” 

Donations from alumni—who say they wish the club, which only started in 2014, had been around when they were students—and local businesses allow the club to loan bikes and wetsuits to many of its members and even cover some race entry fees, lessening the financial burdens that newbie triathletes usually face. — Svati Kirsten Narula '13