NORTHFIELD — After a one-year hiatus, Northfield Mountain will in September be the site of the Great River Challenge, a “nontraditional” triathlon started in 2014 by Northfield resident David Thomas and his business partner Ed Hofmeister.
“Northfield has all the features for a good triathlon here, the hills and trails,” Thomas said. “So I thought it would be kind of fun to start one.”
The course is about 15 miles in total, starting with a kayak or canoe section of about 5.5 miles on the Connecticut River, followed by a running race of about four miles and a bike race of about seven miles.
There are only a handful of other triathlons in western and central Massachusetts. In the Berkshires, there is the Josh Billings Triathlon, now in its 42nd year, which also features paddling instead of swimming; and south of Worcester, MRA Multisport holds a handful of events each year.
What makes the Great River Challenge different from most other triathlons, said the organizers, is its new emphasis on drawing people who might normally be put off by races. In addition to the regular course of about 15 miles, there is a curtailed course that is a few miles shorter and cuts out some of the more difficult climbs in the biking and running sections. There is also an option to enter in teams of up to four and divide the course into relays, allowing people to focus on the sport they are best at.
“It’s still intense and competitive,” Thomas said. “If you’re doing Ironman, you’re not going to race as hard as you would if you’re just doing one leg. If you’re doing one leg at a time, you can really go all out because you’re there for maybe 45 minutes instead of two and a half hours. It’s more about camaraderie, too, with the teams.”
An electronic time-tracking system will allow participants to see how their times on individual sections of the race compare. Awards will be given to the people with the fastest times overall and in individual sections.
“Everyone is inherently competitive, I think, when they’re doing these events. They like to see how they did compared to previous years or to someone else,” Thomas said. “I’ve done well before in the kayak leg, but the running and biking are not my forte. So I get beat by a lot of people doing the bike and run, but I did pretty well because I was able to make up time on the kayak leg.”
The new emphasis on accessibility is not just a gimmick. In 2016, just a few days after the third annual Great River Triathlon, Thomas, at 39 years old, had a stroke.
“There’s more and more young people having strokes, which is not good,” he said. “They don’t know the exact cause yet, but part of it they think could be environmental or just situational, where you’re not really getting outside much. It could be stress-related, whether that’s being indoors at work with the wrong sort of stimuli, whereas being outside, you’re working your cardiovascular system more and being healthy.”
Thomas is especially hoping to draw students. The registration fee for participants 20 or under is half the normal cost, and there are teams from Northfield Mount Hermon and Redemption Christian Academy.
“We would like to do more schools and more teams to get kids out there,” Thomas said. “It’s important. I’ve got kids. It’s easy to see how they get glued to the TV or smartphones or something like that. Thankfully my kids like the outdoors. But even some days, you’re like, ‘Go outside,’ and they’re like, ‘Why?’ Then once they’re outside they’re like, ‘This is so much fun.’ It’s almost like a learned trait now. Hopefully we can encourage greater community involvement to get kids involved and engaged in the outdoors and recreation sorts of things. It’s an alternative to team sports.”
Group training for the Great River Challenge will start in late July or August, Thomas said, and will be announced on the triathlon’s website, greatriverchallenge.com.