Marcia Ratliff/Winonan
On Saturday morning, March 1, Winona State University junior Hannah Koivu was running around in the Integrated Wellness Complex. Only she wasn’t working out; she was making sure everybody else could.
Koivu, sporting a multicolored scarf that made her bright red hair stand out, swung an armful of stopwatches as she cheered on a group of runners in their last leg of a grueling 90-minute swim-bike-run combination.
“Eight minutes left, you can do it,” she said, receiving tired but genuine smiles in return.
The exercise science major decided to be student coordinator for Winona State’s second annual Try-Athlon as part of her practicum class. She thought she’d be helping an IWC staffer put on the event, but it turned out she was responsible for the entire event, start to finish.
“Really, I was doing everything,” she said. “I had to make my own designs and all the marketing, Facebook, flyers.”
Many of her classmates chose to do personal training for their practicum experiences, but Koivu said she chose to do the Try-Athlon because it seemed like a unique option.
The Try-Athlon, free for Winona State students and faculty, was meant to be an introduction to the three events of a traditional triathlon: swimming, biking and running. Instead of distance, however, this event is based on the amount of time the participants spent on each event.
At the beginning level for example, participants swim for 10 minutes, bike for 20 minutes and run for 15 minutes. At the advanced level, participants swim for 20 minutes, bike for 40 minutes and run for 30 minutes.
The entire event took place indoors, so participants did not have to brave the negative wind chills on Saturday.
Koivu said being student coordinator for this event fit well with her goals as an exercise science student. “I really like working with active individuals, so I think coordinating a triathlon gets you into the populations you want to work with,” she said. “You know, marketing for their needs.”
And besides coordinating volunteers on event day, Koivu got experience in other aspects of event planning. She said she made a presentation on motivational thinking and planned to present it to pre-registered participants, but there was only one pre-registration.
Still, the effort was not wasted, Koivu said. “It [helped] me learn how to teach others,” she said.
Abby Standaert, a senior exercise science major, was a volunteer at the event. For Standaert, as for Koivu, the event was an opportunity to practice for her future career.
Standaert said she hopes to go into corporate wellness after graduation and has an internship with General Mills this summer. “Going into the fitness field, anything helps,” she said of volunteering at events like the Try-Athlon.
A good experience for participants, she said, is the foundation for future growth.
Participant Jessica Christy, a senior nursing major, said the Try-Athlon was definitely a success. Even though she is already a very active person, the event motivated her to swim more often.
“It was a great thing to do on a Saturday morning with other college students and professors,” Christy said. “I would love it if this opportunity was offered a couple times a month.”
Only 12 participants did the Try-Athlon, most of them at the advanced level. But Koivu said that was an acceptable number, considering that information about the event was only released a month before it started. Last year’s event had even fewer participants.
“Next year, I would hope that they start advertising for it earlier in advance,” she said. “People need to have time to start training.”
Koivu said she would consider offering pre-Try-Athlon training classes or meetings for people who are new to exercising or have not accessed the resources available at the IWC.
It was rewarding, Koivu said, to see people trying something new, even if many of them were already active. “Seeing people dipping their toes in the water and trying this” was the best part of it, she said. “It’s a safe environment for them.”
