Empire Tri Club Coach and Co-Founder, Alison Kreideweis was recently interviewed by Triathlete Magazine about how the Coronavirus is impacting our club and coaching business. Author Chris Foster writes, “As the coronavirus continues to affect our world and change the way we live, we check in with six triathletes to see how one big thing can be experienced in so many different ways.
As of this writing, roughly 850,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and as the pandemic continues to spread, COVID-19 is something that will likely change the rhythm of our world and our sport for a very long time. As triathletes, our very nature is to seek out challenges, then prepare, adapt, and try to overcome them. In some ways, this crisis is no different. Many triathletes are faced with an ever-shrinking physical world while simultaneously trying to continue doing at least one of the things we love: swim, bike, and/or run. Virtual training groups, virtual races, and “quaranteams” have sprung up to form the communities and challenges that we look for, and triathletes have continued to identify as part of the multisport world even in conditions that were unimaginable only months ago.
We’ve spoken to six triathletes—each in very different geographical areas, with different athletic experience levels, and in different situations. They range from international-level pros to age-groupers to coaches to college athletes. Below we’ve collected some of their observations about how the coronavirus has affected their tiny corner of the world and their perspectives on how they’re coping and what they hope will come next.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll be posting expanded dispatches from each of these six triathletes to give you a closer look at how restrictions, wellness, goals, and personal decisions effectively “create” the smaller world that now surrounds each of them. While not everything is rosy all of the time—in fact, much of it isn’t at all—the fact remains that we are still triathletes preparing, adapting, and overcoming together, even if the challenges have drastically changed.”
