Little Falls students learn the benefits of a triathlon

Mrs. Lantz’s Grade 4/5 class listen as Garth Jansen gives a history lesson on the triathlon. Jansen ran some workshops to generate interest in the Stonetown Triathlon taking place Sunday, July 5, in St. Marys.

By Wendy Lamond

Students at Little Falls Public School had the opportunity to learn about participating in a triathlon from the organizer of a triathlon planned for St. Marys this summer.

The Stonetown Triathlon will be taking place on Sunday, July 5, at the St. Marys Quarry with distances depending on age group. The triathlon is organized by Balance Point Triathlon Club out of London and the Town of St. Marys.

As part of a pilot project to generate interest in the race, Balance Point triathlete Garth Jansen visited Little Falls Public School on four separate occasions, educating students from grades three to six about the history of the sport that combines three different sports – swimming, biking and running.

The town has been very supportive of this event since supporting the Ontario Summer Games Triathlon two years ago. Jansen was connected with Little Falls vice principal Luke van Schaik, who introduced him to teacher Lynn McDougall. McDougall helped organize the sessions, making it a group effort to bring this to fruition.

Jansen, who completed his first triathlon nearly 20 years ago, wanted to relay his love of the sport to the students and encourage them to consider signing up for the event in July. Biking has always been his strongest and favourite part. Judging by the smiles and excitement, Jansen kept the students engaged while teaching them the benefits they would get from these three sports over a lifetime, including exercise, socializing with friends and just having fun.

The workshop started out with a history lesson. For those who don’t know, the first triathlon was hosted in 1974 in Mission Bay, Calif., by two friends who wanted to change up their boring track routine and decided to combine the three sports.

The most well-known triathlon race is the Ironman, which was first started in Hawaii by a group of people who were arguing if the best athletes were swimmers, bikers or runners. To put the distances into perspective for the Ironman race, the swim portion is 3.9 kilometres, which would be approximately from the Quarry to Hearn’s and back. The Bike portion is 180 kilometres, the equivalent of biking to Toronto, and the running portion, roughly 42 kilometres, would be like running from the Quarry to London.

The training and dedication are remarkable for those who participate in a race of that magnitude. The kids also learned the very first Olympic gold medal in triathlon was won by Canadian Simon Whitfield in the Sydney, Australia Olympics in 2000.

Jansen then led the students through a visualization activity to help them understand the distance of each leg of the race, which will start with the swimming portion at the quarry, then cycling along the streets and running along the Thames River.

After that, it was time to play. The students were put into groups where they had the chance to participate in a mock triathlon involving pretend swimming while wearing swim caps and goggles. They then ran back to put on bike helmets and jump on a bike and then finished up running a track around some pylons. It was easy to see how much fun the students were having cheering each other on when it was their turn to race.

The following are the distances for the July triathlon.

Age Swim Bike Run

8-9 100m 4km 1.25km

10-11 100m 4km 1.25km

12-13 300m 8km 2.5km

For more information on the Stonetown Triathlon taking place in July and to register, visit www.bptriathlon.ca/stonetowntri.