Oct 4, 2009

The idea of putting on a triathlon in our home town of Confluence, came about this Spring when John and I entered a YMCA triathlon in the nearby town of Uniontown. It was to be my first tri, and John’s first in over 10 years. To get ready, we were doing a version of what was to become the “Heartbreaker” as workout and realized that our small town had a lot to offer swim/bike/ride wise.

Picking the swim was easy. Swim across and back near the base of the dam on the Yough Lake Reservoir. It’s about 1/2 mile swim in beautiful, clean, warm water. The water from the Upper Yough in Friendsville flows in (and Deep Creek Lake before that), the dam is here in Confluence and the release from that is the water for the Middle and Lower Yough runs.

The bike routes are endless.  It’s hilly here but there are plenty of paved roads that are traveled infrequently by cars. Some of our favorites are “the Casselman Ass Blaster” (a 40 mile ride where you cross the Casselman four times and every time you do, you have a big climb out), “the Mt Davis ride” (a 50 miler that crosses over Mt. Davis, PA’s highest mountain, and through Amish country) and “the Legend of the Laurel Highlands” (a 40 miler that at mile 30 you start the climb up Turkeyfoot Trail Road that goes on for about 20 minutes and gets steeper as you go). Someone once told me that PA has some of the steepest paved roads in the country. For the tri, we picked a 20 mile route that we call “the butterfly”.

And for the run, we have the Great Allegheny Passage Trail right here in town, a converted railroad bed that goes from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD (which connects to the C&O trail and goes all the way to Washington, DC), for endless, flat runs and plenty of other routes around town if you want to include some hills or variety. We picked about a 5 mile run thru town and finishing on the bike trail. Part of the bike ride makes a heart shape, and you know, it’s good for your heart, so thus the name.

Check out the Heartbreaker route here:

So picking the route was the fun, easy part….finding time on our calendars, getting the word out and actually putting together an event was a little more difficult.  Basically we were running out of warm weather and at last minute said, “hey, let’s do this thing this weekend”. I emailed tons of folks, but in the end, 4 of us from IR and a friend we know from yoga went for it on a chilly, breezy Sunday morning. There was a bit of apprehension about the swim and the swim to bike transition soaking wet and in the wind, but the temperature turned out to be just fine and wasn’t a concern, but we plan to make this into an annual event and do it earlier in the year for now on. If you are interested in joining us next year, send us me email and we’ll keep you posted.

Results:

John Weld 1:54:55

Roger Loughney 1:55:31

Jon Harmon 1:59:28

John Jones 2:02:20

Kara Weld 2:26:36

And you all thought we just kayaked!

Special thanks goes out to Jack Weld, Dave Cobun and Jeff Felton for timing. Mike, Lori, Bea, Dusty and Zoe for cheering and the photos. Nan and Pap for watching our kids. And Lucky Dog Cafe/Riversport for use of the staging area.