Roughly two percent of all high school athletes will make it into college to play their sport at the Division I level. Here at FHC, we have had a good amount of people who went to college to play a Division I sport, and now, we have another one added to that list: Clara James-Heer.
James-Heer started running when she was just three years old, and she has been running ever since. Middle school is when she started getting into triathlons.
“I got into triathlon in middle school because my whole family was doing it,” James-Heer said. “I just did a few local races and then joined a club team.”
Back on July 13, she competed in the 2023 World Triathlon Sprint & Relay Championships in Hamburg, Germany. She competed in the Junior Women’s division and finished 40th place with a time of 1:01:20.
“It took a lot of training, probably three hours each day after school,” James-Heer said. “My swim [is what] I need to work the most on because I didn’t grow up as much of a swimmer, and it takes a lot of technique, so I do swimming the most. Sometimes, my swims are two and a half hours at most. And then biking the least, maybe like an hour and a half or even just an hour because that’s probably what I’m best at. And then running, I go thirty to forty miles in a week.”
While not only doing triathlons, James-Heer is also on the FHC cross-country team and has not finished any lower than fourth place in any of her races so far this year.
“I’m doing lots of training with the team right now,” James-Heer said. “We’re doing a lot of miles, probably around forty miles a week, and then three days a week, I’ll cross-train for swimming and biking just to stay in shape, and it also helps me get better for running. I want to try and PR and go about 17:30 for the 5k, and I also want to try to get top five, maybe top three at states. I’m gonna have to race really smart, keep training consistently, and not get injured, hopefully.”
In the past few days, James-Heer has finally decided that she wants to continue her athletic career at the University of Michigan.
“I was deciding between triathlon and running for college,” James-Heer said. “For triathlon, I was either going to go to Texas Christian or Denver and then [for] running Michigan, Illinois, or Northwestern. I recently just decided that I’m going to go to Michigan for running.”
Running in college is a little bit different than running in high school, and James-Heer recognizes that. However, she already has one big goal set.
“There’s going to be fewer meets compared to high school, but they’re going to be a lot more competitive,” James-Heer said. “And the goal as a team there will be to win the Big Ten in cross country.”
After college, James-Heer is still planning on running competitively and doing major triathlons.
“My goal is to try to make it to the world series for triathlon, or maybe the Olympics,” James-Heer said. “Running in college is also going to improve my running for triathlons. I’m still going to do triathlons in college, but I won’t be racing triathlons in NCAA.”
As time goes on, James-Heer hopes to do more and more triathlons as she gets older. And with every one of them, she is hoping to get even faster.
“I’m probably going to do more [triathlons] as I get older,” James-Heer said. “I think I can get in the mid-fifty minutes, maybe about fifty-six minutes; it just depends because some courses can be shorter.”
