The Michigan State triathlon club team is a spectrum of first-time competitors to experienced and ambitious triathletes. For some athletes, this is their first time riding a bike or running competitively, for others, they have been competing in triathlons since middle school and have professional dreams.
The team has one thing in common despite their differing experience or athletic aspirations: They love the sport and the people.
“Triathlon club here is a great community,” Jackson Harrell, a junior triathlete from Oakland, Michigan said. “It’s full of a lot of kindness. It really makes me proud to be a part of it.”
The triathlon consists of race with swimming, biking and running. At the collegiate level, there are three different races. The sprint style: 750K swim, 20K bike and a 5K run; the draft legal, which is the same distances as the sprint but allows for drafting - moving behind another cyclist to reduce wind resistance; and the Olympic, 1.5K swim, 40K bike and 10K run.
The club practices and competes year round. The club holds a swim practice every Monday and Wednesday, a group run every Tuesday, a spin session every Thursday and a “brick” workout on Sundays. The “brick” workout consists of an hour bike session and a half-an-hour run, followed by team brunch.
The club also competes year round. This year, the MSU triathletes competed in two fall triathlons: Boilerman at Purdue and Tri the Illinis at Illinois.
At the collegiate level, the MSU triathlon club competes against other Big Ten schools, including Michigan, Illinois, Purdue, Northwestern and Ohio State.
The price is high having to pay for three sports, estimated to be around two-thousand dollars by MSU athletes, but the team does as much as they can to help others find gear, searching on Facebook marketplace or sharing hand-me-downs.
“It’s just dollars for seconds,” sophomore Annie Suranyi said. “Which sounds crazy, but at the end of the day, if you’re really competitive, it’s worth it.”
The club hosts several events involving the East Lansing community to pay for transportation to competitions.
The club hosted its own indoor triathlon, Sparty Tri, in November in order to raise money for their trip to nationals.
“We raised about half of our funds to go towards our trip to California with that race,” Suranyi said. “Which was really cool cause we got to see a lot of collegiate triathletes from the schools around us as well as members in the community who are also triathletes.”
The team is headed to the USA Triathlon national Championships in Mission Viejo, California April 13-14. Over a hundred collegiate teams will compete, and MSU hopes to place in the top 10 overall.
Sebastian Auza, senior president of the club, lies at the front of this scale from beginner to aspiring professional. He started competing in triathlons only three years ago, when he first arrived at Michigan State from Bolivia.
“I only started training for triathlons here [Michigan State], over there [Bolivia], I only used to swim,” Auza said.
He comes from a long line of swimmers and has been swimming his whole life. His aunt, Paola Penarrieta, competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and has inspired him in his swimming career.
Auza started cycling during the pandemic and fell in love with it. When he got to college, he added on the running and decided to start competing in triathlons.
“A good triathlete is someone that can adapt and that they can bounce back really quick if something goes wrong,” Auza said. “In a race, if you have a problem or something doesn’t go your way, you’re able to laugh and overcome that problem.”
Harrell also comes from a swimming background and is relatively new to triathlons, but has quickly excelled at the sport.
Harrell has swam competitively since 13. The pools in his hometown closed once the pandemic hit, so he started running and cycling to stay in shape. He enjoyed the long hours of cardio and wanted to start competing in triathlons competitively.
“The work ethic that I developed in high school as a swimmer has taught me alot and built me up to be a successful athlete in endurance sports as well,” Harrell said.
This work ethic has paid off for Harrell. He received his professional license this spring and plans to race at the professional level, where he can compete against world class athletes for money, once he graduates.
He placed ninth in the draft legal race at nationals last year in Georgia. Harrell hopes to place even higher this year at the upcoming nationals race in California.
“Optimistically, I’d love to be in the top three in the draft legally individually, top five I’d be pretty content with as well,” Harrell said. “It’s kind of hard to predict those races because so much can go right or wrong.”
Harrell will also be competing in the two other events at nationals, the Olympic race and the mixed-team relay.
He owes a lot of his success in triathlons to his consistency, self-discipline and the support of his team.
“I started this when I was a freshman and I would sit down every Sunday and I would write down my training plan for the week,” Harrell said. “Exactly what I was gonna hit, what sessions I was gonna hit, and how I was gonna hit them. I think that was massive for me. Having my freshman year to gain that discipline and realize that the sport is something I wanted to do after college and something I wanted to take really seriously.”
Sophomore Ruth Giblin feels as though she falls in the middle of this spectrum. She has competed in triathlons since middle school, but mainly has continued competing in triathlons for the community.
“I love going to practice because I love talking to people and I like hanging out,” Giblin said. “I also enjoy the workouts and I love the racing.”
Giblin started competing in triathlons in middle school on a club team in Tennessee. The distances she ran as a middle schooler were a 375 meter swim, 6 mile bike and 2.5 kilometer run. She continued racing, moving up to the next level called a sprint, and finally to the Olympic level race.
She was looking for a school that had a triathlon team while applying for colleges.
“From the look of MSU’s webpage and their Instagram, it was exactly what I wanted,” Giblin said. “Part of the reason I came to MSU was because I wanted to join the club triathlon team.”
Giblin has used her years of experience to not only better her own training, but help her teammates as well.
“I generally know what I’m doing and it’s given me the ability to help other people on the team who are coming and new and not knowing a lot,” Giblin said. “There’s a bit of a learning curve coming into triathlon, but as soon as you do our first race, you get that experience, in really just one or two races.”
Suranyi has also been competing in triathlons since her childhood. Her dad exposed her to the sport and she started competing at 7.
She continued to grow her love for the sport in college and has aspirations to continue competing at the professional level.
“Once I’m done being a full time student, I want to compete in a full ironman and hopefully qualify for the world championship in Kona, Hawaii,” Suranyi said.
When discussing their individual experiences on the team, none of the athletes shared favorite memories revolving around crossing the finish line, placing first or beating a certain time. Rather, they all revolved around the people.
Auza, Giblin and Suranyi all mentioned traveling with their team to competitions and staying in an airbnb with the whole team, cooking dinner and playing games between races.
“With MSU, my absolute favorite part is when, if we have a race where we have to travel, we’ll get an airbnb for the night, and we’ll usually have a team dinner,” Giblin said. “The experience of that dinner at the house, cooking the food together and having the team together, that’s completely one of my favorite things.”
Harrell applauded the ability of his team to balance work and play.
“It’s cool to have that work hard play hard mentality,” Harrell said. “I think that any club that can work hard and play hard and balance the two, triathlon is one of the ones that can do it the most.”