This Sunday, nearly 200 athletes will participate in the Rebel Man Sprint Triathlon.
Athletes will travel to Oxford on Sunday to participate in the eighth annual Rebel Man Sprint Triathlon.
The triathlon will benefit The University of Mississippi Department of Health, Exercise Science and Recreation Management’s (HESRM) professional development program, according to Brent Johnson, the triathlon director and a graduate student in parks and recreation management.
Johnson is responsible for organizing this year’s triathlon, which kicks off Sunday morning at 8 in the Turner Center.
The program is run by the School of Applied Sciences and helps both graduate and undergraduate students fund their career-related expenses. The expenses covered include conference fees for graduate students and certification fees for undergraduate students.
Johnson anticipates hosting nearly 200 participants this year.
“Over half of these people come from outside the immediate driving distance,” Johnson said.
According to the triathlon’s website, the first leg of the race is a 440-meter swim in the Turner Center pool. From there, participants move to a 21-kilometer bike route and then finish with a 5K run through campus.
“The average age of our participants is probably 30 to 35,” Johnson said, “but we do have people as young as 14, and we have several collegiate athletes.”
Johnson said there are medals for all of the finishers in each category, but the overall male and female triathletes will each receive a plaque.
According to Johnson, the triathlon was created to serve as a capstone event in which graduate students in the HESRM department are required to participate in order to graduate from the program.
Anna Pechenik, an instructor of park recreation, is in her third year of involvement with the triathlon. Pechenik said she is most excited about seeing students interact in their field, as well as seeing people having fun while participating in the event.
“They get to see their major happen in real time and know that it’s not someone else doing it,” she said. “The students are doing it.”
Pechenik said the triathlon is dedicated to her friend Kevser Ermin, who was killed in a biking accident. Ermin never participated as an athlete but volunteered her time to help organize the triathlon in the years before her death in 2011.
The triathlon trail passes by a memorial marking the scene of her fatal accident on Old Sardis Road.
“While it’s very sad, it’s also encouraging because Kevser lived her life as the good example for health and fitness,” Pechenik said.
“It’s encouraging to bike past it and think Kevser would be proud of me today.”
Pechenik said she wants to encourage people to participate in a triathlon because the training provides a purpose while exercising and is fun.
“It’s a way to take fitness and make it extremely fun,” Pechenik said. “Workouts can be a chore, but participating in a triathlon is awesome, I promise.”
