Pushing students to swim, bike and run for glory, the Tinman Triathlon is a time-honoured tradition at Elmira District Secondary School. Organizers are gearing up again for May 28.

“We’re still getting entries in, but we are hoping to have about the same as last year, which was about 450 [students],” said EDSS phys ed. teacher Laurie Murray.

The event will make use of the pool at the Woolwich Memorial Centre. After that, athletes will move to a transition area at the back of the WMC before riding their bikes along Snyder Avenue to the Kissing Bridge Trail. Cyclists will make a right turn and ride to Northfield Avenue before turning around and racing to Floradale Drive and back to the WMC. Participants then drop their bikes and start to race on foot starting from Snyder Avenue, past Sugar King Drive and Bluebird Place, then to First Street and Barnswallow Drive and Lions Park. The racers will circle back and end the race on the EDSS home field.

Last year EDSS hosted 18 different schools from Waterloo and Wellington counties for the one-day event consisting of a 375-metre swim, a 15-km bike ride and a 5-km run.

EDSS students fared well last year, with a junior boys second-place triathlon winner (Brandon Berchtold) coming in at 1:04:22 and a fifth place in the senior boys category (Keith Weber) at 1:05:21. For the girls senior Jenny Norris took sixth place clocking in at 1:14:02, and in the triathlon relay category, EDSS students Keenan Courtis, Morgan McPhee and Matt Bannon clocked in at 52:44 taking first place.

“We’re the only ones crazy enough to run it,” Murray joked when asked why EDSS hosts the event every year.

“In the country, there is not as much traffic, I think that’s part of it. It’s easier to get a permit for it when you are in a smaller town and the fact that we have the Kissing Bridge Trail just down the road is one of the reasons we get the permit for it because the bikers are not on the streets.”

As for the training involved, Murray said some students are more serious about the competition than others.

“A lot of kids do relay so they only have to do one of the events. But the kids that do the full thing, many of them train fairly hard for it. I know that some of them are already coming to the pool every morning, or to practice before their event on lunch hours,” she said.

The students and staff participants are split into categories ranging from junior girls and boys singles, staff singles and junior and senior girls singles. There are also junior and senior boys and girls relay teams that compete in single events, an open mixed relay for both boys and girls and a staff relay team. First place winners in each category receive medals, and ribbons are given out to teams finishing in the second to sixth places.

The event is also promoted through a video linked to the EDSS website. Created by students Tyler Seguin and Scott Carerre, it shows an EDSS athlete going through the motions before and during the competition.