More than 700 competitors will jump into Banks Channel Saturday, Sept. 27 to begin the Wilmington YMCA Sprint Triathlon. Within that swimming, splashing mass of bodies will be 700 individual stories; 700 reasons for undertaking a 1,500-meter swim, 12-mile bike ride and 5k run.
Molly O’Dell, Ellen Carpenter and Deborah Russell became close friends in college before life took them in different directions. Now, 40 years later, they are using the triathlon as a reason to reunite at the beach. Because none of them have attempted a triathlon before, they decided to compete as a relay team. They call themselves “60 Rocks.”
Russell said her preparation for completing the bike ride leg of the race was simple.
“First, I had to go find a bike,” she said during a Sept. 23 phone interview. “Then I had to get a helmet so now I feel like I’m all set.”
Russell said she has been training for the race by riding her new bike every day around the hilly roads of her Richmond, Va., neighborhood. Although her team lacks experience, she said they have just one goal for the triathlon.
“We want to finish it,” she said. “To finish it and have fun.”
Racing alongside first-time competitors like Russell will be experienced triathletes like Wrightsville Beach resident Jim Mincher. Mincher helped organize the inaugural YMCA triathlon in 1979, and he has competed in the race most years since. He said the inaugural race only drew 99 participants because it was the first triathlon to be held on the East Coast.
“Nobody had ever heard of triathlons,” he said during a Sept. 23 phone interview. “You didn’t know how to train. There wasn’t any science to it, you just got out there and did it.”
Mincher has seen participation in the triathlon grow tremendously over the last 33 years, especially after the race distance was shortened from a standard triathlon to a sprint triathlon. He said one of the reasons he competes year after year is that proceeds from the race benefit the YMCA.
“The YMCA is great,” he said. “It reaches many, many people in Wilmington, not just athletes.”
As a YMCA personal trainer and Y-TriClub member, Lori Campbell’s involvement in the triathlon would seem self-explanatory. In recent years, however, her participation in the race represents a more personal journey.
“I did the triathlon every year up until I got leukemia,” she said during a Sept. 22 phone interview.
Campbell said she took a break from racing after her diagnosis, but when she realized her final chemotherapy treatment fell two days before the 2009 YMCA triathlon, she asked her doctor for permission to compete.
“I couldn’t really race,” she said. “I walked the whole thing, but I had friends that walked at the end with me so to be able to finish that, it was like a finale for everything. It was pretty emotional.”
Campbell said every year since that day, crossing the finish line of the YMCA triathlon brings back those memories. For her, this year’s triathlon marks five years in remission.
“I’m very blessed to be here,” she said. “The important thing to me is that I don’t forget that, because it can change tomorrow.”
Through her involvement with the YMCA’s Livestrong program, she hopes to inspire others who are battling cancer.
“I want to be able to tell them that they can get past where they are, get back to normal life and they can set goals for things they never thought possible,” she said. “Just because you’ve had cancer it doesn’t mean you have to settle for less.”
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