by Dan Rosenfield
As he crosses the finish line, gasping for air after finishing an almost 32.2 mile triathlon, Junior Aaron Kager can only think of one thing,
“You want food right away,” Kager said. “Going that long without actual food is really taxing. So, usually when you cross the finish line, you get food and hug your teammates afterwards.”
Kager is on UD’s Club Triathlon team, he competes in Olympic Distance Triathlons which consists of a one mile swim, a 25 mile bike, and a 6.2 mile run which usually takes over two hours. As expected, the training regimen for a triathlon can be very volume heavy.
“You start training three months out” Kager said. “You do a little bit of strength training at the beginning. As the weeks go by, you get more focused on the sports, so you do running biking and swimming more often. The majority of training is volume training, so you do low intensity but for a long time because it’s an endurance event.”
Kager runs during a triathlon
The biomedical engineering major and Public Relations Chair for the team knows he has to use time management skills to make room in the day for training.
“You gotta wake up early and go to bed early,” Kager said. “I do two workouts a day, you just gotta make time. A lot of people are put off by the idea of a triathlon, but honestly, it’s just allocating time like anything in life .”
Kager was actually a preferred walk on for the men’s lacrosse team, but the prospect of being a bench warmer for his career swayed his interests to triathlon.
“I didn’t like the team dynamic and I didn’t like the idea of sitting on the bench for three years, so I switched to club Triathlon,” Kager said. “It was a little more laid back and the team culture was a lot more collaborative and focused on the science and exercise and bio mechanics so I just found that I liked the team a lot better and it was well suited to my passions for endurance sports.”
His teammates are one of the main reasons he has stuck with the team.
“I really like the team,” Kager said. “Practice doesn’t seem like a chore to me, it’s time to spend with people that you care about training with. You’d be amazed at how much people just review literature and discuss it, and talk about critiquing diet and training.”
Kager and the rest of the triathlon team will be heading to their next race in Cedarville, N.J. for the New Jersey Devilman race on Sunday, May 5.