Race Coverage

Epic in So Many Ways...

Wednesday, 04 April 2012 03:00

Race Coverage - We hope you read yesterday's "Epic Newbie" post. If you did, you'd have a sense for how goshdarn epic the Life Time Leadman Epic 125 really was. Hellaciously tough courses. Even hellacious-er conditions (55 degrees with major chop; unrelenting 25-30 mph winds with 50+ mph gusts; 85 degree heat). This totally hard, yet cool and wonderful, event defied exaggeration.

Epic events give birth to epic stories, the embellishable stuff that legends are made of. Let's tell a few now, shall we?

* Matt Russell, the handsome bald pro who finished 2nd on Saturday, has a smoking hot South African girlfriend. Gillian Foreman is a triathlete and an actress who has a very charming accent and has been in several movies, most notably "Ocean's 13." This means that she got to hang out with George Clooney and Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. As she waited excitedly for her boyfriend to finish, a fellow spectator giddily asked her (we overhead this): "Isn't Brad Pitt like the handsomest guy ever?"...

"Not really," Gillian replied matter-of-factly.

The fellow spectator was dumbstruck and on the verge of tears. The very foundation of her world appeared to have been undermined. Seeing this, Gillian diplomatically added, "But he photographs really well."

Gillian is filming a movie in Salt Lake City right now. Dangit! We've forgotten the title.

waz * On the way to the event, Life Time employees Charlie Wasley, who is Hugh Jackman handsome, albeit much swarthier, and Dave Schutz, whose genuine good looks are decidedly more Aryan, stopped at a Whole Foods to buy organic fruit and muffins that appeared to be made of twigs and compost. As official, though reluctant, Leadman entrants, they were anxious to get the fueling process underway. Charlie, a surfer (photo L), then drove to the race site as Dave sat in the back seat, worrying quietly. Dave's lovely wife Amanda sat in the back seat too and watched her husband fidget and an unnamed race guy road shotgun.

Wasley regaled the passengers with several stories, the first of which pertained to how he damaged one of his thumbs. He described how he "whapped it violently on his Leadman 100 belt buckle as he was zipping his fly," leaving his audience with mental images they wished they didn't have.

He then admitted he had yet to ride his bike, neither indoors or out, this year. He thus questioned his readiness for the task that lay ahead. Duh! swim

Wearing his signature omnipresent smile, Wasley arrived at Leadman's finish in an SUV. He did manage to complete the bike portion, though it took him more than five hours to do so.

Shutz did not decide to enter the Leadman until March 1, before which he had done almost no training at all. "It was time to roll off the couch," he said by way of explanation.

Dave, who directs Trinona and the Minneapolis Triathlon and prefers Hip Hop to music with singing in it, did complete the entire 125 kilometers, placing 115th.

* The Leadman awards breakfast featured several eloquent and moving speeches. Leading the way was LTF CEO Bahram Akradi, who explained his company's "Epic" vision and why the new Epic tris were swim and bike-heavy. "We want to give you an epic challenge," he said. "But we don't want you to need several weeks or months to recover." He added that by limiting the run distance, the most physically damaging of triathlon's three disciplines, participants can return to racing, in most cases, in just a couple of weeks. Cool.

Women's repeat champion Angela Naeth, who is beyond awesome, gave a very sweet acceptance speech in which she led the event's attendees in a toast to Life Time Fitness for elevating the sport of triathlon and the multisport lifestyle. She vowed to race at the next Leadman Epic, which will take place in beautiful Bend, Oregon in September.

Men's champ Maik Twelseik, the very cool German guy who won the TriStar-Minnesota last August, gave a charmingly unintelligible acceptance speech. When the emcee later asked the crowd if they understood Maik's heavily accented comments, two people raised their hands. One of those folks was 45-49M winner, Holger Beckmann; the other was 5th place pro woman Uli Bromme, who was the only person in the field with an umlaut in her name. Guess what country those two are from.

The other great speech was movingly delivered by 2011 champ Jordan Rapp, who endured repeated bad luck (flats etc.) on Saturday, yet finished anyway. "I felt fine today. I was just unlucky," he said. He could have DNFed, saving himself for the next race. But he didn't. "Why did I finish?" he asked himself out loud, then answered, "Because I could." Awesome guy.

girls Several Minnesotans completed the Epic challenge on Saturday. Here's how they did: