By: JoAnn Cranson Running for a specific team or club is a great opportunity and honor, but along with that comes an expectation. Being on Team Athletic Mentors is a prestigious position to be in. Naturally we (as a team) want to do our best and win races, whether running, cycling, triathlons, skiing, etc., but that’s not what it’s all about. As a master athlete, I’m not going to finish in the top overall positions in events I compete in. But there is so much more myself and others can bring to a race. My goal is to inspire others to find what they enjoy doing and to motivate them to pursue a healthy lifestyle and positive attitude. This world has
By Sean Siems There are many classes and opportunities given by Athletic Mentors to help better their athletes and make them complete their goals. Out of these many classes and opportunities lies the open water swim class. This class is coached by Athletic Mentors coaches and offers athletes an opportunity to help heighten their open water swimming ability for triathlons or relays. The curriculum isolates certain spots that need work to be more efficient when swimming. This class I highly recommend to people that are looking to start swimming or even those who are already great swimmers. Sean and siblings practicing sighting and cornering around buoys. The Open Water Swim Class, located at Kalamazoo College, right off of West Main on
By: Nick Thielen Hi, my name is Nick Thielen. I’m 14 years old and in the 8th grade at Warner Middle School in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Outside of cycling I play basketball and run track. I started practicing with Huron Valley United Racing in 2021 and realized I was a pretty good cyclist so I decided to stick with it. This past season I won the MISCA Advanced Middle School state championship winning 4 out of 6 races. After the MISCA season, I raced Iceman for the third time. Iceman is definitely my favorite race. The atmosphere is great and the course is always challenging but super fun. This upcoming season will be my first year on Team
By: Jay Campbell Swim, Bike, Run …. Do well at all three and you will be a good triathlete. But to be a great triathlete, you need to master what some call the ‘4th discipline’, the transition. How important is the transition? It becomes more important in shorter races. In a 600 minute race (10 hours) the difference between a 2 minute and a 4 minute transition is less than a 1% improvement…so not that important. But if you are doing supersprint races (~30 minutes), that would be a 13% improvement! Just to prove that I know what I am talking about, here are the top-10 fastest T1 + T2 times at the 2023 Eagle Lake Triathlon, a ‘sprint’ distance
By: Donald Smith Hello, my name is Donald Smith from Brighton, MI. I am 13 years old and am in 8th grade. I am currently homeschooled and go to a co-op for electives and other classes. I like homeschooling because it allows me the freedom to ride outside whenever I want. I live right across from Island Lake State Park, so I can ride there from my house. The addiction of cycling hit me when I was 5 years old and my dad had to constantly take me mountain biking, riding a short loop on blue over and over again. My dad has been riding forever and it is something we like to do together…and honestly, I did not enjoy
By: Natalie Rowe A few weeks ago, Athletic Mentors hosted their Swim Stroke Video Analysis. There were 12 of us that participated, many of us fairly experienced swimmers…but after watching the videos, we all had technique issues, mostly hand entry and catch issues. Just to give you an idea, I grabbed an image from one of my videos to show you what we saw under the water. When we met and reviewed our videos as a group, we started talking about the upcoming racing season, training and triathlon in general. It got me thinking…we were all beginners at some point and pretty clueless about all things triathlon. I thought it would be fun if a few experienced triathletes answered some
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