Rebecca Mueller/Winonan

Athletes and non-athletes alike will soon be competing in the first annual Winona State University indoor Try-athlon.

The indoor triathlon will take place at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Mar. 9 in the Memorial Hall Pool and the Integrated Wellness Complex Fitness Center. It is open to all Winona State students, faculty and staff.

“I think it’s important to stay active and healthy,” said Samantha Sollie, a graduate assistant in the Integrated Wellness Complex and one of five event coordinators for the Try-Athlon. The event is meant to encourage physical wellness for the entire Winona State campus, not just current student athletes.

The event is based on a traditional triathlon, which involves swimming, biking and running. Participants will swim in the Memorial Hall pool, then ride bicycles or other cardio equipment in the Fitness Center and finish running on the indoor track.

Because the Try-athlon will take place indoors, some modifications to the traditional format have been made. Most noticeably, the Try-athlon will be run in timed legs rather than in one connected run.

Participants will compete in three different groups with different amounts of activity, including beginner, intermediate and advanced. Beginners will be competing for 45 minutes in total, while advanced participants will compete for 90 minutes.

The setting of the event was chosen to promote the various locations for exercise on campus, many of which can be found in the Wellness Complex.

“Since we have such a nice facility, we thought it’d be a good place to start,” Sollie said.

The Try-athlon is one of a series of events at Winona State that celebrates this year’s university theme, Well-Connected: Piecing Together a Well You. Seven subthemes include intellectual, spiritual, emotional, environmental, social, occupational and physical.

“A lot of people are still working on their New Year’s resolutions,” Sollie said. The process of training and participating in the Try-athlon could help competitors maintain their goals for the new year or create new goals, she said.

Several exercise programs are available online to help participants prepare for the Try-athlon. These programs were designed by a group of students in the health, exercise, and rehabilitative sciences department, led by professor Connie Mettille.

Participants in each level of the Try-athlon can choose from four different training programs. Each version of the training program suggests a schedule in which the participant practices swimming, biking and running for increasing amounts of time. Toward the end of each multi-week program, the participant is meant to practice the three segments of the Try-athlon for more time than they will do the activity in the actual competition.

Sollie is hoping for at least fifty people to participate in the inaugural event. Her goal is to turn the Try-athlon into an annual event at Winona State.

Participants can pre-register until March 1 at the front desk of the Integrated Wellness Complex.

Contact Rebecca at [email protected]