A Kids Triathlon Clinic/Camp in Eugene

For several years I was involved in a great, 200+ participant youth triathlon in the Fresno, California area called the Sierra Kids Triathlon.

The Eugene area doesn’t seem to have one, and I don’t have the energy or time to put one on… but how about a clinic/camp!

My ideas are as follows and open to improvement. I’ve also done some thinking/dreaming of practical steps. I have no financial resources/stake etc in this so if I can’t find enough people interested to make it worthwhile we’ll just stop planning… but I think it’s possible!

Location: Eugene would be great, but Corvallis may be an even better location due to OSU being there with a strong local triathlon, and closer to Salem which also seems to have a strong Tri Community.

Potential Locations in Eugene:

SWIM

A pool swim is not as ‘cool’ but I think much safer for first-time and youth triathletes in particular. Echo Hollow and Amazon both are amazing facilities — River Road would be great but there’s not an easy way to exit the pool area without going through locker rooms etc that I can see. Plus, the area around it wouldn’t be all that great for biking as we will see.

BIKE

Although there are some great trails near and around Amazon, from what I can tell they’re smaller than this route that would have some street parts, but more than half on a dedicated off-street trail that’s 8 miles round trip, great for younger kids. 10 and under kids we could probably even find a route around the school area.

Amazon Pool

we could get some more distance here if they went down to say pringle point, then back up to the football fields then back down and over. But I don’t doing so much cross-traffic when possible… no one wants a head on collision if kids are passing etc. It seems that the amazon trail isn’t continuous past those points but perhaps if we have enough crossing guards could make it go a bit longer?

River Road Pool (Emerald Park)

I love River Road’s pool center and it seems like a bit more of a truly local recreation district that might be able to collaborate, but the area around it isn’t that conducive to biking projects it seems… I’ve down my own ‘local’ triathlon there but I had to cross busy streets like Maxwell etc. On the other hand there is a little trail that runs up to the school; a bike that went up through there and around might work? But very small residential streets…

RUN

Obviously we couldn’t have the bike and run be on the same trails per se as typically different age groups are working on different things at the same time. The downside to the multi-use trail approach is that you’re stuck with bike or run; whereas if you close down streets you can have bikers on the street and runners on the sidewalk (that’s what we did in Fresno). Echo Hollow has a school or two around it but it looks like no track, so something would have to be figured out. Amazon does have a track which always makes for a nice finish line/staging area for the inevitable practice tri at the end of the prep!

My thought would be May 2023 with advertising beginning in February 2023. A tentative calendar would be:

Oct 2022: Start meetings!

Nov: Start securing permits and volunteers, routes

Dec-March: Sponsorships and fundraising to underwrite; get a website ready for signups!

April: A practice event with adult volunteers.

May: Training camp/clinic!

June: repeat Kids triathlon clinic for kids who did it and to bring their friends — maybe at a local lake

July: Tri at the Grove has a kids race!