Tri Team Spotlight: USC Tri Club

Inside Triathlon Senior Editor Jennifer Purdie will be stopping by the USC Tri Club on Wednesday, April 27. Here’s a spotlight on this growing triathlon club that holds workouts in and around the campus of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Who is a member?

Any member of the USC community is welcome to join the team. We are mainly composed of undergrads and grad students, with a handful of alumni members and a couple of faculty members.

What is your club like?

This team is what you make it. There are workouts every single day, with two workouts offered Monday-Thursday and off-campus workouts on the weekends. Every few weeks we have a social event, and before races we usually try to have a team potluck of some sort. Some team members are involved in other clubs and just come to a couple practices a week and socials when it’s convenient, and other members come to every practice and social event. The team offers enough that this can definitely be your main extracurricular activity.

Where do you train?

We train at the track here at USC, the pools in the PED building and at the Lyon Center, and on the streets around USC. During the week we ride down to the Ballona Creek Path and then out to the beach from there, for longer rides we’ll go all the way down to Redondo Beach and back.

When do you train?

We train every day, with the exception of Fridays, which are more of an optional/informal workout day. Morning workouts are at 7 or 8am and night workouts are at 6 or 7pm.

What races do you do together as a club?

We try to race in as many WCCTC  (West Coast Collegiate Triathlon Conference) races as we can, but stay close to school. Usually we’ll end up sending a good group to race at UCSD, UCLA, UCSB and Cal Poly, then we send our top-seven guys and top-seven girls to USAT Collegiate National Championships in April.

When was it established?

The club was established in 2001 and has been growing very rapidly since 2007.
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