ATHABASCA — Some do it for the love of their sport, or their community and whatever it may be, it's certainly nice to do it alongside your best friend.
In the case of Athabasca's Janene Kargus and Heather Boucher and their business Parallel 54, they loved watching and helping out at various triathlons, so went into business together and organized their own — the Kapawinihk Triathlon, which will return to Athabasca later this year, after the inaugural event took place in 2019, but had to be cancelled in 2020 due to COVID restrictions.
The two women grew up together in Athabasca, and are close enough they’re almost like twins separated at birth who then found each other as friends, and while neither of them has officially competed in a triathlon they took on the task of putting one on to showcase the amazing Athabasca landscape, Kargus said.
“For the last, oh over seven years I’ve travelled all over Alberta in the racing season – it starts the beginning of May to October – to all these events and it always sort of just bothered me I was always going south,” Kargus said in a June 28 interview.
That was when the ladies formed Parallel 54, and out of that sprang the Kapawinihk Triathlon.
“Our business name is Parallel 54 because the hope is, maybe in a couple or three years we have two or three different events,” she said. “’Kapawinihk’ in Cree stands for Athabasca Landing and the hope is maybe we can look into another northern Alberta community.”
Held in September it is meant to be more of a fun triathlon as all events to qualify for different finals are finished and participants can relax a bit more.
“We have such a gem in our town and county; we’re so lucky.” said Kargus. “With the Muskeg Creek Trail, Landing Trail, the river. In 2019, we just sort of threw caution to the wind and started planning then opened registration and was very pleasantly surprised that we had so much interest in attending.”
And not once did the ladies order anything online or even go into an urban centre for supplies.
“As a person who's done lots with kids in sports and needed help when it comes to silent auction items and fundraising and barbecues, you're knocking on the local businesses doors and they're the ones who are like ‘Yeah, we're there for you,’” she said. “We were really adamant about that. If we couldn't get it in Athabasca, we didn't go to the urban centres, I researched and we went to Slave Lake.”
They are also ecologically friendly using cloth ribbon to mark trails so it biodegrades if it’s missed and used water jugs to refill cups or water bottles, producing only two kitchen-sized bags of garbage from an event that had 100 participants and 75 volunteers.
“We heard it throughout the entire day, ‘We cannot believe you guys have this in your backyard,’” she said. “So, it was a whole opportunity just to be able to showcase the community and not just the town, the county as well, and local campsites and all of the trail systems.”
Then the pandemic hit and the 2020 race looked like it may be able to run, then it didn’t. Back and forth until the duo decided to just call it and put it off until this year.
“So, we just decided ‘You know what? It's okay, just let it sit for a year, and it will be fine,” said Kargus. “So, we did that; just worked on new plans for this year. Now we're moving into 2021 and we're sort of full steam ahead unless we get shut down so we have some precautions in there in case we’re told we can’t do it.”
This year the triathlon will feature biking around the Muskeg Creek Trails, a 10-kilometre paddle up the Athabasca River followed by running the trails at River Meadows RV Park, then an evening of mingling and enjoying craft beer made by Dog Island Brewing.
“What I love the most about it is that – and I’ve been at races all over Alberta – once the race is finished people go home,” she said. “But here, because we're at a campsite and people are camping and stuff, people stayed.”
So, these ladies who love hosting triathlons are bringing tourists in and are even finding some have come back for a repeat visit.
“These people, they've never been here, ever, and now we're one of their main camping spots,” she said.
They are cautiously moving forward hoping the fall will be as open as the summer is after Alberta officially moved into Stage 3 of the Open for Summer Plan July 1.
“Now we're moving into 2021 and we're sort of full steam ahead unless we get shut down,” said Kargus. “We have some precautions in place and will totally follow government guidelines and restrictions.”
