Race Previews

Exciting Upgrades!

Saturday, 09 February 2019 23:10

Press Release:  Active Central MN 2-5-19
 
 Active Central MN, which is the new nonprofit organization that has taken over management of the Apple Duathlon, the Buffalo Triathlon, Graniteman Clearwater, and Graniteman Big Lake is proud to announce some exciting upgrades for the upcoming 2019 season!
 
Active Central MN exists to support and sustain local events that benefit the health, fitness, and overall wellness of our community.  Active Central offers logistical, financial, and management support to key local events, so that they can continue to be offered year after year to the people of Central MN and beyond.  Active Central MN hopes to expand the number of events it supports in the future as well as the variety of activities those events provide....

 
The Apple Duathlon, which has been one of the nation’s favorite duathlons for 37 years and has been used as a qualifying event for both the national and world duathlon championships, now has a brand new website!  As you will see the race has restructured the kids portion of that event a bit and eliminated the kids specific duathlon.  The race will now be allowing kids 10 and over to compete in the sprint distance duathlon and have also added the Apple 5k Family Fun Run to the event to try and get some more community participation in the event.  All this is done in hopes to increase the exposure locally and also bring in a few more dollars without increasing overhead. 

The Buffalo Triathlon is Back!!  Active Central is very thankful for the dedicated sponsors that have stepped up to help make it possible.  The Buffalo Triathlon has been known as a favorite early season race for the past 16 years and we are excited to keep it going.   In order to help keep the event sustainable, Active Central is making a couple course changes.  The swim course will be similar, but will move to a counter clockwise direction with substantially larger swim markers which will make it much easier to find your way around the course.  This change will also eliminate a few key pinch points that created traffic jams in the past.  

For the bike course at Buffalo, as a cost savings across the board that will help make the event more sustainable and easier to manage and to address some safety concerns, we are going to a 1 lap sprint course and a 2 lap Olympic course.  The distance of the sprint lap is almost exactly the distance needed to make it a 2 lap course, will be safer for the bikers, easier to manage logistically, and it will save a substantial amount of time and expense in a number of areas.  The city, county, and race management all approve of the change, so hopefully it works well and is an overall win for the event in the long run.

Graniteman Clearwater will be changing the date from what had traditionally been early July to June 29th!  With hopes of finding a little more elbow room on the calendar and helping the triathlon community as a whole gain some traction, we thought the move away from a very busy early July might be a win for a number of key Minnesota races.  Only time will tell, but we hope to see a fun energetic crowd once again in Clearwater this year!
 
Graniteman Big Lake will benefit from the acquisition of the enlarged swim marker buoys, but will be largely unchanged because we like the slogan “If it aint broke, don’t fix it!”
 
Looking forward to, and planning for, a fantastic 2019 Multi-Sport season!
 
Apple Duathlon, Sat May 25th  www.appleduathlon.org
Buffalo Triathlon, Sun June 2  www.tribuff.com
Graniteman Clearwater, Sat June 29th  www.granitemantri.com
Graniteman Big Lake, Sat Aug 3rd  www.granitemantri.com