TriAdventure Multisport Coaching & Fitness, the area's leading multisport coaching company, recently announced the date for the second annual TriAdventure Summer Sprint Triathlon.  The second year event, to be held in Christiansburg and Montgomery County, will again be part of Set-Up Event’s Virginia Triathlon Series.  The date for the event is Sunday August 5^th, 2012.

Christiansburg is an ideal location for this event featuring a course that is scenic, fast and safe.  The event will begin, transition and end at the new, state-of-the-art Christiansburg Aquatic Center.  Swimmers will navigate a 400 yard snake-swim before taking on the out-and-back, relatively flat, 13.5 mile bike course.  The race will end with a fast 5k run along Depot Street in Christiansburg.

The TriAdventure Summer Sprint will join Set-Up Event’s established state-wide portfolio of 20-plus endurance events which include Angel’s Race in Lynchburg, the Smith Mountain Lake Sprint and Bath County's Lake Moomaw Triathlon. “Working with a first-class company like Set-UP to host the new TriAdventure Summer Sprint fits in perfectly with the mission of TriAdventure Multisport Coaching”, said Anne Jones Thompson, founder of TriAdventure Multisport.  Part of the proceeds from the race will be donated to Fitness In Action, a non-profit company formed to help underprivileged youth in the New River Valley train for and complete a triathlon.

The 2nd Annual TriAdventure Summer Sprint will take place on Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 7:00 a.m., at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center, in Christiansburg, VA. The public is invited to watch the race and cheer on the competitors. 

Registration will open November 1^st, 2011. Interested participants are encouraged to register early as space is limited. Visit www.triadventure.com or www.setupevents.com, or call Kelly McPherson at 540-818-1463 for more information. 

Gabriel Bennett Finished Second in the 14 and under age group and set the stage for the rest of the TriAdventure  Triathletes as they raced in Richmond in the Brinkman Sprint Triathlon. All together, 10 kids and 6 adults participated, many of them competing in their first triathlon.  

Competing adults included Erin Wininger, Gleen Skutt, Will Stacey, Patricia Arav, Nav Gupta and Allen Duncan. The kids group included new triathletes Ben, Nate and Caleb, and "veterans" Aska, Nick, Charlie, Avery, Sid, Hans and Gabriel. 

The weather was perfect and the orange looked great! Thanks to all for making the year so amazing!

TriAdventure's Taylor Jennings has been on a roll this fall, coming in 3rd in his age group and 25th overall at the Patriot's Half Ironman Triathlon in Williamsburg, VA (which qualified him for the USAT National Long Course Championships), 1st in his age group and 9th overall at the Cane Creek Sprint in North Carolina, andnow, a 3rd in his age group and a 52nd overall (out of 750) at the USAT National Long Course Triathlon Championships at Myrtle Beach, SC this past weekend!

At Myrtle Beach, Taylor dropped ten minutes from his previous Half-Iron time, and earned a spot on the USA Team racing in the Long Course World Championships in Spain next summer.

Matthew won the 15 and Under Age-Group and was only 11 minutes back from the overall winner. This was Matthew's 5th triathlon of the season!

Dad David finished just behind Matthew, and PRrd for the pool portion of the swim - that's what a summer of hard training will do for you!

Way to go guys! Congratulations!

The course, the preparations and the community all seemed to come together for the inaugural

TriAdventure Summer Sprint Triathlon in Christiansburg on Sunday.

By Mark Taylor

CHRISTIANSBURG -- As one of the region's top female triathletes, Cortney Martin is used to being among the first racers across the line.

But as she worked toward earning herself yet more hardware in a triathlon Sunday morning, she got something she isn't so accustomed to: personalized cheers.

"It was great fun to race in front of a hometown crowd," Martin, a 44-year-old from Blacksburg, said shortly after winning the women's masters division in the inaugural TriAdventure Summer Sprint Triathlon in Christiansburg. "It really helped, too. "It was painful coming up that last hill on the run."

The race, which drew more than 240 solo and relay team competitors to the Christiansburg Aquatic Center, featured a 400-meter pool swim, a 12.4-mile bike ride and a 5K run.

While the triathlon attracted plenty of serious racers, including a number of members of Virginia Tech's triathlon team, many were novices attracted by the event's modest distances and pool swim.

"A lot of beginners and newbies like the pool," said Anne Jones of TriAdventure, a multisports coaching company based in the New River Valley. "There was an amazing number of first-timers in the race. "And just about everybody was from around here."

The event marked the return of a traditional swim-bike-run triathlon to the New River Valley for the first time since 2000, when a competitor in a small triathlon in Blacksburg was killed during the race.

The accident occurred when triathlete Gary Wayne Taylor of Lynchburg collided on his bike with a car while racing through an intersection that was not being monitored by a traffic-controlling race marshal.

Jones said Christiansburg town leaders were wary about hosting a triathlon, which can pose logistical challenges through road closures and traffic monitoring.

"We had to go to town council more than once to get this approved," she said.

A key to getting the OK on the race was persuading town leaders that safety and precision coordination was a priority for the race.

TriAdventure contracted Set Up Events, a race production company that directs hundreds of triathlons in the mid-Atlantic each year, to direct the race, which, unlike the Blacksburg event in 2000, was sanctioned through the U.S. Triathlon Association.

The groups brought town leaders, including the police department, into the planning early on. Police Capt. Chris Ramsey, who heads the department's patrol division, said he started attending planning meetings last fall. "Everybody's top priority going in was safety," Ramsey said. "TriAdventure and Set Up were great. Their attitude going into it was, 'Tell us what to do and we'll do it.' "

Ramsey helped find 20 off-duty officers to work the event, their labor paid for by race organizers. Seven regular patrollers also helped with the event. All intersections were marshaled, and the entire bike course, along Depot Street, was closed to traffic during the event.

Ramsey said that was the most sweeping road closure he'd ever seen put in place.

Martin said she was impressed. "I felt very safe out there on the bike and the run," she said. "It was very well done."

Men's winner Ryan Day, who lives just a mile and a half from the race site, said the race had the feel of a larger event. "You'd think this was a half-ironman or something," said Day, the only racer to finish the course in less than an hour. "I feel like an upscale triathlon has come to our area. "This is an outgoing community, and something like this feeds it."

Participants seemed impressed not only with how smoothly the race unfolded, but by the course itself. With friends and family members of racers cheering from the aquatic center's bleachers, swimmers snaked lane-to-lane through the swim before running to their waiting bikes in an adjacent parking lot.

Kate Buss, a 17-year-old Blacksburg High School rising senior who won the women's race, said the swim was her favorite part. "I guess because I caught Ryan," a smiling Buss said of Day, who started just ahead of her in the time-trial start but soon overtook Buss on the bike leg on his way to an easy win.

The bike course took riders through the town and onto Mud Pike Road, a rolling rural route that parallels Interstate 81.

Kelsey Dodson, a 24-year-old from Blacksburg who was competing in her first triathlon, said the bike course was beautiful but tough because of the frequent hills. "But every time you thought, 'Oh my gosh!' you realized you were almost to the top of the hill," said Dodson, who bounded up to Jones after the race and asked when the next triathlon was.

Ten-year-old Charlie Skutt of Blacksburg was the youngest competitor in the race, the second triathlon he and father Glenn Skutt have done this year. "They're fun," Charlie said. "It's a good way to keep fit, and it's fun to bike and swim and run. "But it's a little tiring."

Jones said the hope is to make the event an annual stop on Set Up's Virginia Triathlon Series.

Joe Hulings, a 70-year-old from Burke who was among the event's oldest competitors, hopes that happens. "This is going to be one of my favorites," said Hulings, who usually does about eight or nine triathlons a year. "I'm going to come back to this one."

Copyright © 2011

-Lerone Graham

Christiansburg this weekend plays host to a triathlon that will draw over 200 participants to its aquatic center.

Sunday's TriAdventure Summer Sprint starts at 7 a.m. with a 400-meter swim, followed by a 13 mile bike ride along Mud Pike Road, ending with a 3.1-mile run through Cambria and back to the aquatic center.

Kelly McPherson with TriAdventure said 245 seasoned triathletes and newcomers have signed up for the event, which she hopes can become an annual competition.

"It's going to be a mix. There's going to be some people who have won races, and tons of others who are trying their first triathlon," she said.

The event will benefit the local nonprofit Fitness in Action, which provides training and the opportunity to participate in triathlons to underprivileged children.

Planning for the competition started in late fall 2010. Since then she said it's taken ample time and energy to secure sponsors, recruit volunteers and obtain advertising and permits from the Town of Christiansburg and Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

Hosting the event in town provides a unique opportunity to local triathletes because most travel to other areas for competitions, she said. While locals can now sleep in their own beds, McPherson said, competitors from Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Ohio and other parts of Virginia are making the trip to Christiansburg for the weekend.

Fun and safety are the main goals this weekend, McPherson said. The ideal routes were chosen after careful planning and working with town police, she said. McPherson said TriAdventure and the town have the capacity to make the event bigger, so the hope is that next year even more come out to participate.

With an event this size comes attention to traffic. Drivers traveling from 5:30 a.m. to noon may experience closures, detours and delays, according to town spokeswoman Becky Wilburn.

Plans call for certain sections of Depot Street to be reduced to one lane, while other sections along the triathlon route will be closed during the event. A list of suggested detours are listed at christiansburg.org.

The town sent out phone calls to notify residents of closures, which has given the town an opportunity to test its emergency notification system during a nonemergency, Wilburn said.

This weekend's event, she said, is another example of the "broad array of recreation opportunities" within town, allowing participants to "enjoy the scenery" and amenities Christiansburg offers.

Copyright © 2011

Salem, VA, June 5th, 2011 -  

Females 15 and Under: First Place, Grace Bishop

Males 15 and Under: First Place, Flip Bishop

Males 15 and Under: Second Place, Matthew Conner

Masters Women: First Place, Denyse Sanderson

Team Relay: First Place, Brandie and Jason

Novice Women: First Place, Liz Futrell

Novice Men: First Place, Ben Hannam

Men 30-34: First Place, Eric Wininger

Men 30-34: Third Place, Michael Hart

Men 40-44: Third Place, Stacey Ballowe

Great job Denyse!  

World Qualifier, Jan McGilliard finished 2010 ranked 96 in the 60-64 age-group, while Sarah Abbott ranked 40th in the 18-19 age-group. Denyse Sanderson, racing in one of the largest age-groups (1659), 45-59, ranked 705.

Nick Hosig, racing in the 15 and under category was ranked 112.

In order to qualify for a national ranking, racers have to compete in at least 3 USAT sanctioned races and race competitively against the best in the category. Using pace setters to determine a par time for each race, the USAT takes the best times calculated times by the pace setters, and uses a formula to award points for race finishing times. Those with the fastest times compared to the pace setters receive a higher par time, which allows for more points and therefore, a higher ranking.