On Sunday, June 14th, 2026 1,700 athletes participated in the 4th annual Ironman 70.3 Happy Valley Triathalon. Ironman races are held around the world but this is the fourth time the race has been conducted in Centre and Clinton Counties. Athletes start with a 1.2 mile swim at Foster Joseph Sayers lake in Clinton County, then a 56 mile bicycle race through Clinton and Centre Counties to the Penn State University Campus at Beaver Stadium. The final leg is a 13.1 mile run through the Penn State Campus. For the first time this year a group of professional athletes competed in qualifying for the Ironman world championship. Participating athletes came from all over the world.
Although the Ironman has extensive planning for safety, security, and communications, amateur radio operators were placed along the bicycle course at locations between aid stations or traffic control set up by the Ironman. This coverage provided extra eyes and ears on the course to report problems into incident command. Amateur Radio Operators (AROs) used the W3YA two meter repeater for communications. An ARO was embedded in the Penn State University Communications Centre to relay reports directly to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and Incident Command (IC). The EOC consisted of the Ironman Incident Commander and officials from Penn State EMA, Clinton County EMA, Centre County EMA, local fire departments, Penn State Ambulance Service, Centre LifeLink Ambualnce Service, state and local police departments.
The race was relatively free of problems but AROs made several requests for medical, technical, or transport issues for the athletes. Amateur Radio Operations started at 0600 and ended at 1400. AROs who participated were:
- Brett Saylor, W3SWL
- Bill Gartner, KD3CPR
- Gordon Vanauken, KC0QJX
- Andy Mummert, W3AND
- Keith Comp,KC3FVN
- Greg Guise, K3HOT
- James Fry, KC3EWN
- Eric Prescott, W3EDP
- Todd Landry, K1TJL
- Craig Miller, K3OOL
- Carmine Prestia, K3CWP
Thank you to the above AROs who gave up most of their Saturday to work the race and to the Ironman and the local agencies that invited amateur radio to participate. Thanks also to the Nittany Amateur Radio Club for use of the W3YA repeater.