Socorro Chile Triathlon this Saturday hosts state championship

Amy Kimball was not an athlete growing up, and while she liked to swim and ride a bike and on occasion jog, she didn’t do any of them with particular regularity and never really thought of doing so competitively.

That is until a co-worker – Kimball is an astronomical scientist who oversees the Very Large Array offices in Socorro – persuaded her to give the Socorro Chile Harvest Festival Triathlon a whirl.

“She just convinced me one year to do it with a month to go,” Kimball recalled. “I found a month-long training regimen. I like to be active and I felt it would be really empowering so I tried it out and I really enjoyed it.”

That was in 2018, and since Kimball has completed this triathlon two more times, including last year. This year, because of some knee issues, she will be joining several co-workers in the event as a relay team, with Kimball taking the cycling leg.

She will be among some 200 participants that will start out Saturday in the 27th running of the triathlon, said race director Luis Contreras.

Known as a sprint-triathlon, the event includes a 400-meter pool swim, followed by a 20-kilometer bike ride that essentially tours the New Mexico Tech campus, followed by a 5-kilometer run winding through Socorro’s residential areas.

“I think that it is important for Socorro,” Contreras said. “This is the second year that we’re recognized by USA Triathlon as the state championship so the event is well known and Socorro is a destination for sports.”

And it draws not only local athletes, and those from around the rest of the state, but also Texas, Arizona and Colorado. There was even one competitor from Missouri.

So it’s a bit of an economic boon to Socorro, as well.

“Everything we do, the timing company, the trophies, they’re local vendors,” Contreras said. “We use a lot of local New Mexico businesses and Socorro businesses. We have people that stay overnight in the hotels and they eat at the restaurants.”

The event also utilizes many local volunteers to keep it going, he said.

“We have about 50 volunteers,” he said. “Locals, students and faculty from New Mexico Tech, youth teams. The Socorro ham radio club has people helping on the course, using ham radios to keep track of the athletes to make sure there are no emergencies, and if there are, they can communicate.”

The Socorro High School cross country teams also annually help out, said coach Beth Cadol, who also runs the four-age-division youth triathlon for athletes aged 7-14 that goes off on Friday.

“About eight years ago, I took over and I find it so inspiring that kids will try anything if given the opportunity,” she said. “I don’t enjoy swimming or biking, but I love the idea of offering the kids the opportunity to challenge themselves in a way that is super crazy, to test their limits. It’s for anybody. I literally have kids who push their bikes around the campus. It’s accessible even if kids are not thinking of themselves as triathletes.”

Some of the Warriors athletes who have aged out of the youth triathlon will be competing in the main event, Cadol said, while others will serve at a water station.

“It’s a really fun weekend. It’s a lot of planning and a lot work, but it’s so fun to see so many people come together and make it happen,” she said. “I do ask them to volunteer. I hope it gives them a sense of agency. I see them as responsible and they rise to the occasion. They do a great job and they’re so reliable.”

For Kimball, avoiding the pool isn’t a bad thing.

“I think the swimming is the hardest for me, at least it was at the time,” she said. “I’m a little worried about my knee so I’m just biking this year. The swim is really hard because you have 100 other people swimming at the same time as you. It’s a lot more chaotic than when you’re just practicing on your own.”

So now she’s looking forward to the camaraderie of the relay experience.

“It was a mutual thing,” Kimball said of the decision to do a relay. “One of them is my gym buddy and they’re both people I work with. We each had an exercise that we preferred and they matched up with the triathlon relay.”