Divin' Deep- Podcast

The podcast features an interview with Kyle Swenson, the vice president of the Triathlon Club at Iowa State. He explains that a triathlon combines swimming, biking, and running into one race. He started doing triathlons when he was seven and got inspired by a triathlon that raised money for kids with cancer. He is still involved with the cause through an organization called Cycle Health. He mainly competes in sprint and Olympic distance triathlons. He trains for about 10-12 hours a week and finds it enjoyable and a way to escape everyday challenges. The Triathlon Club at Iowa State practices five to six days a week and competes in races during the summer. Nationals is the highlight of the year for the club. Swenson says it is fairly easy for someone to start training for triathlons, especially if they have a background in one of the sports. Hello, welcome to the podcast Dive in Deep where we interview interesting people from the Ames area. Today we have the one and only Kyle Swenson hailing from Maple Grove, Minnesota. He is currently the vice president of the Triathlon Club here at Iowa State and a participant in the World Triathlon event in Switzerland and he is going to talk to us about triathlons. So Kyle, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Gabe. I was looking forward to this all week so it's fun to be here. It is very fun. So first, for the people who don't know, what is a triathlon? So a triathlon is a unique sporting event that combines three distinct sports starting with the swim. So you swim and enter on the beach and swim. Typically, I'll get into the distances here in a second, so it starts with the swim. You go into transition where your bike is already set up and then you go off on a bike and then come back from the bike into the same area that you dropped from your swim and then go off into a run and to the finish line. So it combines the sports of swimming, biking, and running into one race. That's great. And you've been training for triathlons since you were seven, correct? Yeah. When I was seven, I was doing kids races every summer up until about I was 12 or 13 when I finally was old enough to do my first triathlon. I kind of got the start with that. My sister, she's five years older than me and when she was eight, she was doing swimming lessons at the Fostholm School in Maple Grove and her swim instructor told her about a triathlon that was happening that weekend and she convinced my mom to let her join. It was through an organization called Miracles of Mitch that raised money for kids with cancer. So our family, after seeing my sister perform in the triathlon, it was pretty inspired by the events. They had an event at the end where all of the kids that you were raising money for from the hospital come and kind of be there at the finish line and cheer you across and you could just have an interaction with the kids who weren't as fortunate to be able to do those races. So our family got really invested with the organization of Miracles of Mitch and over the years became top fundraisers and we really fell in love with the sport of triathlon and each year I really looked forward to doing the race. My background growing up in the sport of cross country running and swimming just led right into a competitive path into the sport of triathlon. That's great. Are you still involved with that cause? Like do you do a yearly race with them? So with Miracles of Mitch we kind of separated my family and some of the founders of Miracles of Mitch and we started a different organization called Cycle Health and the mission at Cycle Health was to help change the cycle of health in America starting with kids. So getting kids active we believed would inspire the parents to get out and active and just help change the epidemic of health and obesity that we have in America. So we put on four different races throughout the year and one of them is a triathlon each summer. So I've been pretty involved with that since it was started in 2014 and I don't currently race in the triathlons there but I definitely help organize and set up for the races and enjoy having all the kids out and seeing them enjoy a sport that I love so dearly. That's really awesome. Back to your sister, could you beat her in a race right now? You know for a lot of years it was always my goal to beat my sister. I really look up to her, she's a big role model for me and someone that I trust and really adore for all she's accomplished but it's been a few years now since I've lost to her and I would say in an Olympic distance triathlon I would beat her by probably close to 20 minutes. 20 minutes, wow that's really awesome. So earlier you mentioned the distances, how far do you swim, bike and run? Yeah, so in the sport of triathlon I would say there's four different pretty common distances that people would do. The first of all and the shortest is the sprint distance and that consists of a half mile or 800 meter swim, a 20k or 12 mile bike and then a 5k run which is 3.1 miles. The Olympic distance which I would say is probably the most common distance is exactly double that so about a mile swim, 24ish mile bike and then a 10k run so 6.2 miles. Then beyond the Olympic distance you have the half marathon or the half Ironman distance which is a one point, it's just over a mile swim and then it's a 56 mile bike and a 13 mile half marathon run followed up by the most probably well known triathlon event which is a full Ironman which is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike followed up by a full marathon 26.2 mile run. But myself I mainly compete in sprint distance and Olympic distance. Someday I imagine I'll get to the half and full Ironman but I'm definitely not there yet. That is crazy amounts of distance. Talk to me about the training that you do on a weekly basis because that sounds, I mean you have to be in great shape to do this. Yeah, so I would say I take my training pretty seriously more than most people. For a lot of people the sport of triathlon is just a fun event for them but I've over the years have been taking it pretty competitively. So during the school year I would say I'm typically training between 10 and 12 hours a week. So what that looks like is that'll be probably three or four swims per week, about three or four bikes and then maybe four or five runs. And that'll change throughout the season depending on which of the disciplines I'll be focusing on at the time. Typically I'll pick a year or a time of year where I'll focus more specifically on one facet whether that's swimming, biking or running just to see the most improvement. It's hard to improve on all of them at the same time rather than kind of specializing and improving that way. When I think about training for a triathlon I feel like I wouldn't be motivated enough but also motivation, there's a difference between being motivated and I think being disciplined because you've been training since you were seven you said so it's hard to stay motivated over all those years but the fact is you're disciplined. Talk about what it takes to get up and go train every day. Yeah, so what I would say to that is for me I've been doing it for so long I don't even almost view it as training. For me it's kind of, it's a place where I can go to escape the challenges and the frustrations that I face in everyday life that comes with school and friends. My body's gotten to a point now where when I'm doing, when I'm running or cycling I oftentimes can enter almost a flow zone where I just let my thoughts flow and there are times where I of course, days are more challenging to get up early and to do a swim or to get on my bike for two hours but I just remind myself that it's a part of my lifestyle and I do enjoy it once I get going and I've really enjoyed the process and I think that's also the fun part about competing in a sport like triathlon is the process is so unique. In so many other sports you really have to dial in one aspect of something but with triathlon I'm able to do three different sports all on its own so if one part of a season I'm really feeling burnt out with running I can just turn my focus towards swimming and cycling and eventually I'll get to a point where you know I'm ready to take on the running again. So it's, I don't so much view it as you know I have to get up every morning and do this, it's more you know this is what I love to do and yeah I just look forward to doing that everyday. Yeah, that is a great mindset to have I think. Talk a little bit about, you're currently the Vice President of the Triathlon Club at Iowa State. What does the Triathlon Club do and do you enjoy being a member of it? Yeah, so my sister, I'll kind of back up here and say a little bit of history. So my sister came to Iowa State and she was, throughout her time she was actually became the President of the Triathlon Club and I grew fond of the people that she had at races and kind of grew a friendship with some of them there and decided I wanted to come to Iowa State in large part because of the Triathlon Club and just the fun nature of it. So the Triathlon Club on campus we practice five days a week, actually six days a week swimming in Byer Hall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays and then biking outside when it's nice and indoors when it's not on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and then we'll have running workouts kind of outside sprinkled in there and I would say the Triathlon Club here is just a unique community of people who are just looking to have fun in the sport of triathlon and so it's really people from all walks of life, all majors, all different studies on campus and we get together and just kind of connect over the passion to swim, bike and run and we compete, one of the unique things about triathlon is we have to do it in an open body of water so in Iowa it typically isn't warm enough in the winter so all of our season is competed, occurs during the summer so that's what's fun about it is we get to, in the off season of school, we get to get together and race at different races in the Midwest and then each year in the spring we go down to Nationals as a team and compete against other collegiate triathlon teams in the country at a big race so that's always the highlight I would say of the year for the club. Yeah that's exciting, I know you talked about it earlier, Nationals is coming up in a few weeks now, let's say that there's a new student who's looking for something to do and they see the triathlon club and they think about starting to train for triathlons, how easy is it to jump in if someone, you said you ran cross country and you were a runner and it was kind of in your family but how easy is it for someone to start training to participate in triathlons? Yeah I think that's kind of a unique thing about triathlon is you can really start anywhere and we have club members who have never even been in the water before who are like man I really someday want to do an Ironman and we participate practices in Bayer Hall so it's a really controlled environment with lifeguards and we have a very accepting mindset of not everyone is at a super high competitive level and we'll typically for practices we'll have fun relays towards the end or just ways that we can connect with people, especially people who are newer to the sport and even people on campus who don't have bikes, one of the cool things about the tri club is we have a set of bikes for people to use during practices so they don't even need to have a bike at school and then the running, a lot of that happens outside and we typically will have people running with each other and try to make those group runs really where we stay together and just enjoy the company of each other so we really have, triathlon can be a sport that seems like there's a high barrier to entry but at the tri club on campus we really try to break down that barrier and make it accessible to everyone who is looking to compete or just have fun with the sport and try something new. That's really awesome, I didn't know that, how many people do you have currently in the tri club? So right now I'd say we have an active member base of probably about 30 people coming up in two and a half weeks as we mentioned earlier as nationals and we'll be taking a team of about 15 down to Beaufort, Georgia which is a little bit north and east of Atlanta to race in the Olympic distance race on Saturday so it should be a good time, we'll travel down as a team and just make a lot of good memories and have fun racing together. That's very cool, think about all the years you've been doing triathlons, what is the highlight moment, what is the pinnacle of just joy and happiness that you've gotten from triathlons? That's a tough question, I think that maybe the pinnacle moment that I've had is inspiring the next generation of triathletes in the work that I get to do with cycle health and now it's become a part of the YMCA, it's just seeing the joy that it brings to the next generation of people who are interested in multi-sport has been really fulfilling, life is so much beyond myself and I've come to realize that and individual performances come and go and at the end of the day it's all about the journey that you have and how you impact the people around you and just the platform that I've been able to share to people younger than myself and have treated them as, kind of be a role model in the sport of triathlon specifically has been really inspiring and that's a large part of why I continue to do what I do and love it so much is just the interactions I've had with the kids to be able to put a smile on their face and show them that this sport has really unique attributes to offer and can be really powerful in their, throughout their entire life, so. That's really cool that it's not just, you know, I figured you were going to say racing in Switzerland, you know, with your sister, but I think that it's great that you've had such a huge impact for kids and other people outside of just racing, I think that's great that you've turned something that you love to have a positive effect on other people. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to say about the sport of triathlon? Yeah, I think I'd just like to say for any of you guys listening who have even had a thought about doing a triathlon, even if it was, you know, you saw the timeline come across or a news headline about someone completing an Ironman, just to give it a try, there's a ton of really great people in the community of triathlon, people always are willing to help, so just reach out to someone who's familiar with that, if that's myself as a part of the triathlon club or just a community member who's at a local triathlon, we as a community would always love to have new people come and try out the sport and fall in love with it in the same ways that we did. So, yeah, I just encourage you to get outside your comfort zone if that is where it's at and give a triathlon a try, because it could be a life-changing experience and I've certainly seen the positives of that in my own life. Sweet. Well, thank you, Kyle. Thank you for joining us today. It was great to have you. I appreciate your time and your answers. So, thank you. Tune in next time to our podcast, Diving Deep, where we will interview more interesting people. Have a good day.