By: Jay Campbell If you are a Zwifter, you may have experienced a bit of bike-envy when a glowing-neon-bike came in and out of your view. [A “Zwifter” is a user of Zwift, “… a massively multiplayer online cycling and running physical training program that enables users to interact, train and compete in a virtual world.” -Wikipedia] That neon bike is commonly known as the “Tron” bike and formally referred to as the “Zwift Concept Z1 Bike.” It is colorful and it is fast. This article will divulge some hacks to unlock your Tron Bike quicker. Author’s avatar on his Zwift Concept Z1 (Tron) bike on top of the Radio Tower climb with Alpe du Zwift in the background. He accumulated
By:Katja Opfer My first season on TAMJD got off to a bit of a rough start when I broke my thumb at my high school ski team’s training camp in early January. While my ski racing season ended before it even began, this meant that I had a lot of time to train and build up base miles in Zwift. Breaking my thumb reinforced my belief that everything happens for a reason, because having all that time to train set me up well going into the cycling season and it paid off. My fitness was better than ever before and I had a great time at the team’s spring training camp in North Carolina, where I got to do some
Two powerful studies, published in highly respected medical journals, followed almost 900,000 subjects for a number of years and concluded that higher VO2 max was associated with lower mortality across all fitness levels. And while there seemed to be no upper limit to the benefits of aerobic fitness (CRF), the impact of lower aerobic fitness on longevity was clearly similar to commonly recognized comorbidities: “ Increased Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF) was associated with reduced long-term mortality (death by any cause) with no observed upper limit of benefit. The adjusted mortality risk of reduced CRF was greater than or equal to traditional clinical risk factors, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and smoking. Extreme aerobic fitness (CRF ≥ 2 SDs above the mean
By: JoAnn Cranson Are you like me and getting a good night’s sleep can be a challenge? “Why can’t I sleep like I did as a teenager?” As we age we produce less of a growth hormone which allows us to not get into as long, deep sleep like when we were young. With this in mind, there are a number of things we can do to set us up for better sleep: Limit caffeine. Everyone is different, but I find I can’t have caffeine after 2 pm. (The half-life of caffeine is around 5 hours.” Meaning if you took in 200mg of caffeine, after roughly 5hrs, half of that (100g) will have been excreted. But some people metabolize caffeinefaster or
By: Kellen Siems My name is Kellen Siems. I am 14 years old and a freshman at Hackett Catholic Prep. This is my second year racing for Athletic Mentors. I competed in many triathlons and 5K races this past spring and summer. I started off the triathlon season with the sprint distance at the Grand Rapids Triathlon, moving up from the supersprint distance last year. I then did the Cereal City Triathlon for the first time. I was back doing the Shermanator. My favorite triathlon was the Michigan Titanium Olympic relay. My sister and brother were on my team. Brie swam, Sean biked, and I ran. I made sure to train hard because I had not run a 10K in a
An interview with program director: Terry Ritter What were some highlights of year four for the program? We were able to win a number of local road races in the Elite class, on both the west and the east side of the state (Waterford and Grattan), with multiple juniors. 3 of them did the 2023 Iceman in the PRO class, with Jonathan Meyer getting 13th overall. Jon also raced in his first PRO criterium field at Tour of America’s Dairyland (ToAD). Charlotte raced up a junior class at ToAD and took 2nd in the 17-18 field for the 5 day omnium. Jack Kozlowski took 3rd in his Cat. 4 omnium as well. We also took a few wins in the
Athletic Mentors