The Back Mountain Triathlon will happen again on Aug. 25 at Harveys Lake, featuring over 300 athletes, including many first-time triathletes. This year's race will have a new sprint distance along with the original Olympic length race, as well as aqua bike and relay options.
Before the race, the Back Mountain Triathlon Committee and the Times Leader will present a 17-week series focusing on young athletes and their role in the future of triathlon. These young racers are seen as key to the future of triathlon in the Back Mountain and across the United States.
Alexandra (Alex) Leandri won the first-place female finisher in the inaugural Back Mountain Triathlon on Aug. 20, 2023. She excelled in swimming, biking, and running, achieving the fastest run among all female competitors.
Leandri's parents are from Wilkes Barre, and despite growing up in Mechanicsburg and now living in Nashville, she still has family in the area, including her uncle, Bill Leandri, who was a past president at Luzerne National Bank.
Leandri grew up in Mechanicsburg and attended Trinity High School in Camp Hill, where she participated in cross country, track, and swimming, setting the school record for the 2-mile run.
She also achieved state qualification in breaststroke and the mile, and attended Penn State where she graduated in 2016 with a degree in Industrial Engineering. During her time at Penn State, she started biking with her running friends and eventually became interested in triathlons.
Biking became a part of her training routine, leading her to take on her first triathlon in Harrisburg, followed by the 2012 Wilkes-Barre Triathlon. Since then, she has participated in over 30 triathlons, including five at the Half IronMan distance (70.3).
Despite her comfort with longer distances, Leandri favors the Sprint distance and has won the USAT National Mixed Super Sprint competition twice with her team. She anchored the final leg of the 2022 race, where they completed the competition in under 20 minutes.
Although experienced with longer distances, Leandri prefers the Sprint distance. She is part of a team that has won the USAT National Mixed Super Sprint competitions twice, completing a 250 meter swim, 5K bike, and 1200 meter run.
In 2022, her team emerged victorious at USAT Nationals where they completed the three legs in under 20 minutes. Her team aims to defend its title in Omaha, Neb., in June.
After college, Leandri lived in Connecticut before settling in Nashville in 2018. She joined the local triathlon club and met Conrad Goeringer during a workout, who later became her coach and business partner in the coaching business he co-founded, Working Triathlete.
Goeringer, the men's division winner of last year's Back Mountain Triathlon, was impressed with Alex's progress in the sport and invited her to help coach other athletes through their coaching business.
Today she trains 25 triathletes while working full time as a design engineer.
Leandri has some good advice for new and developing triathletes: “Keep it fun! Training should never feel like a task. Do it for you!”
She suggests focusing on the specifics because, as she says, “The small things accumulate.”
This involves practicing race nutrition, working on transitions, trying out the clothing you will wear for your race, such as your kit, shoes, socks, etc. All these things add up.
She prefers when a bike course has a flatter section near the beginning because this gives her time to settle in, get some fuel, and ease into race pace. She likes to practice her cycling race pace, and it helps her create significant gaps on the competition.
Because Leandri is a national champion at the Super Sprint relay and her favorite distance is the sprint, transitions require great focus in her race. This involves mounting the bike coming out of T1 on the bike course, and the flying dismount off the bike into T2. Leandri notes that this requires continual practice, but she agrees that it “looks so cool” when you do it right.
Another Leandri tip for athletes looking to work on this method: she uses small hair ties to hold her shoes in place as she mounts the bike coming out of T1.
Moving to Tennessee has opened many opportunities for Leandri, but there is one thing she still yearns for.
“There isn’t good pizza in Nashville,” she said.
Which brings up one of the benefits of coming to race, train or visit NEPA — the food. Leandri reminds of her motto, “Any size pizza is a personal size pizza,” she said, “if you work hard and believe in yourself” — which is great advice for triathlon training, too.
In Nashville, Leandri has built a great community of friends and many of them are other runners and triathletes. It makes training more enjoyable, but also keeps you accountable for workouts when you are meeting up with friends or even athletes you coach.
Leandri only had great things to say about the Back Mountain Triathlon. For those thinking of racing it this year here are some good things to know.
She said that the race course is very easy to watch. Leandri should know. She had an estimated 15 to 20 supporters watching her race last year.
The course is beautiful, especially the rolling hills of the bike course between the Lake and Noxen and back up to the Sordoni Farm. The run course is challenging — she likened it to her 2012 run on the old Wilkes-Barre Triathlon run course.
She remembers lots of people in good spirits, and lots of high fives between athletes, including some with her friend and coach, Goeringer.
Leandri’s time was faster than 91 of the 95 male competitors, too. She won by 10 minutes in 2023 but isn’t sure yet if she will be back this summer to defend her title. Leandri has got big plans and is going places, which includes her plan to race at 70.3 World Championships in New Zealand in December.
