Preps: Q&A with Arrowhead’s Cody Clauer.
WITH CODY CLAUER
Cody Clauer has been pulling double duty.
The Arrowhead senior has been one of the top runners for a cross country team that ranks third in Division 1 in the Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Association state rankings.
In his spare time, he is a triathlete, and a pretty good one at that. On Sept. 17, he finished 27th in the 16-19 age group at the International Triathlon Union World Grand Final in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Clauer competed in the sprint, which is a 750-meter swim, 20,000-meter bike ride and 5,000-meter run. He finished in 1 hour 7 minutes 53 seconds, the third-fastest American in his age group. The race capped a big summer for Clauer, who competed in five of seven Wisconsin Tri Series races and in August placed seventh in the 15-19 age group at the USA Triathlon National Championship. His time of 1:04.19 made him the fastest 17-year-old in the event.
With the blessing of Arrowhead cross country coach Mike Mulrooney and swim coach Kevin Ewald, Clauer has been able to maintain his training schedule while competing for the high school.
He competed in his first triathlon when he was 6 years old but became serious about the sport at 13. His mother, Karen, is his coach.
Clauer took a couple of minutes to tell the Journal Sentinel’s Mark Stewart about his experience.
Q. There aren’t a lot of high school triathletes. What do you get out of the sport?
A. Triathlon requires a lot of determination to train three different disciplines. It takes a lot of time and dedication to the sport, making sure you
put in the effort every single day and really stay committed to high school sports as well. I still run cross country, swim full time and do track, so it takes a lot of effort to make sure I stay into sports and fully commit myself during the high school season.
Q. How do you balance training for the triathlon and training for whatever high school sport is in season?
A. Coach Mulrooney helped me a lot this summer going into the cross country season, allowing me to take a couple of days off and allowing me to bike and swim on my off time. I made sure I did run a lot more in the summer or off-season. I did do quite a bit of onerous training. On Saturdays I’d go on group runs and Sundays I’d do open swims or lake swims, things like that.
Q. What is it like to have your mother as your triathlon coach?
A. Living with your coach keeps you honest. It keeps you making sure that you’re doing your training every day, that you’re eating right. They’re pretty much watching everything you put in your body so that’s a benefit. She makes sure that I’m not eating stuff that I’m not supposed to be eating. Coach Mulrooney can’t do that for me. She gets to train with me. We do a lot of biking together. She puts my training schedules together. It’s really nice that way.
Q. What is your favorite part of the triathlon?
A. I don’t have a favorite. The season that I’m in season is my favorite. When I’m running it’s my favorite thing to be doing. When I’m swimming it’s my favorite thing to be doing. I really don’t have a preference of which one is my favorite.
Q. What advice would you give someone interested in trying the triathlon?
A. I actually had quite a few teammates who have talked to me about wanting to try triathlon and basically what I tell them is you’ve got to make sure you can swim obviously, that you’ve got a decent enough bike that you can bike a couple of miles with it and really to make sure you have some fun while you’re doing it. Make sure you put in a couple of miles of running, which all my teammates have since they’re all on the cross country team, but that you don’t push yourself too hard when you race it because if you go out too fast, you’re going to die. And for training making sure you get used to riding on your bike and you’re comfortable getting a couple of miles on your bike and that you practice transitions from going between swims to bike or bike to run. It’s not the super-hard sport.