LAKE HAVASU CITY — Hundreds of college students are in Lake Havasu City this week. And not all are here to party.

Athletes emerge from the waters of Lake Havasu after a mile swim during the 2009 Havasu Triathlon. Triathlon requires athletes to swim one mile, bicycle 25 miles and finish with a 6.2-mile run. The 7th Annual Havasu Triathlon gets underway Saturday at 7:30 a.m. at Windsor Beach 4 at Lake Havasu State Park. David Bell/News-Herald Photo, File.

Saturday’s 7th annual Havasu Triathlon at Lake Havasu State Park is also the championship race for the Mountain Collegiate Triathlon Conference. Which means more than 200 collegiate athletes will be swimming the waters of Lake Havasu and biking and riding Lake Havasu City streets.

“This is our third year as the Mountain Conference championship,” said race director and founder Jonathon Grinder of Tucson Racing. “We started at 130 athletes and now we’re well over 200. And we’re starting to get other schools (such as) the Naval Academy, all sorts of schools.”

The Havasu Triathlon starts and ends at Windsor 4 Beach at Lake Havasu State Park. Triathletes will start with a 1500-meter swim in the Bridge Channel, transition to a bike ride on London Bridge Road and finish with a run over the London Bridge and back to the finish line at Windsor 4.

The Mountain Collegiate Triathlon Conference includes University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Colorado State University, University of Colorado, Brigham Young University and the Air Force Academy.

The Havasu Triathlon is the second largest collegiate race in the U.S., behind the National Championships, which will be held April 17 in Lubbock, Texas.

Last year the University of Colorado swept the major awards in both the men’s and women’s categories, with Colorado’s Cedric Wane the overall winner with a time of 1:59:52. Wane returns Saturday to defend his title.

Colorado’s Kim Schreiner was the first woman to cross at 2:25:57.

The University of Arizona Tricats were second place finishers in both men’s and women’s team scoring.

The Havasu Triathlon is one of the first triathlons of the racing season — and features an open water swim — so the local race is expected to draw almost 700 athletes.

In a press release, officials with the Lake Havasu City Convention and Visitors Bureau said that registrations are coming in from as far away as Alaska and Massachusetts.