Race Coverage
Sean Still Has Really Big Thighs...
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Tuesday, 12 June 2012 02:40
Liberty Half Coverage - We hadn't seen Sean Kaneski (photo L) in almost a "Coon's Age." Though we don't know what a coon's age is exactly, we suspect that any Coon's Age worth it's salt (What does "worth it's salt" mean, anyway? We digress.) needs to be at least a decade. The last time we saw Sean was when he placed 13th overall (3rd in his AG) at Ironman Wisconsin. He popped a 9:46 that day. Nice. That was in 2003, nine years ago. Almost a Coon's Age.
One would expect that a person who hadn't been seen in almost a coon's age would have undergone some physical changes. Not total disfigurement, necessarily, but still some alterations that would be hard to miss. Hair or tooth loss, weight gain, varicosities, wearing clothes more suitable for the golf course than...Once again, we digress.
Sean hadn't changed all that much. He is still a handsome, dark-haired guy who is not burdened by tallness. And his thighs still ...
resemble sequoia trunks. He still possessed an east coast sort of swagger, the kind that could get him cast on "Jersey Shore." If we're not mistaken, he was wearing the same blackbottoms that he wore in the 90s.
It was great to Sean at the 7th annual Liberty Half last Saturday. And it made us almost giddy when he finished 5th overall in 4:28:35, which despite the fact that this year's event was staged at hot, wind-slashed, hilly-as-hell Lake Rebecca, is sort of a masters race record. The enduring mark was set by fellow totally cool dude, Doug Davis (4:30:31), on the Lake Independence course in 
2009.
Okay, Saturday's race course featured a 53ish mile bike course, not the standard 56, like at Baker Park. BUT, you had to see the run course that was used at Rebecca. One guy thought he remembered a brief flat area around mile nine, but he was hallucinating. He withdrew his claim after receiving three bags of rejuvenating clear stuff in the med tent.
Sean Kaneski's "Hey-I-Still-Got-It!" performance at Liberty Half was but one of a plethora of amazing highlights, starting with Ed Gadient's breakout win in 4:11:47, giving him an amortized time in the 4:19 range. On this course! Whoa. The Chicago-based former St. Paulian's best time for the 70.3 distance coming into Liberty was the 4:30:19 he set in a 4th place effort at toasty Door County in '11. (FYI, the floppy-haired Gadient turned in a 4:30:32 3rd-place performance at Lake Independence last year.)
The men's podium on Saturday included pre-race fave Bennett Isabella (2nd in 4:16:19) and Eau Claire-ian John Taipale (4:22:11), who finished 9th the prior weekend at Buffalo Olympic. John's last name is pronounced "Type-ah-la," we think. It's a Finnish thing.
The pre-race faves in the women's race sooooooooooo did not disappoint on Saturday. Kortney Haag and Michelle Andres turned in brilliant efforts (pretend that the "R" is rolled for like five seconds!). Kort's 2nd career half W was accomplished in 4:35:45, or the equivalent of a 4:43 on a true 70.3. Her bike and run splits were exceptional under the geographical and climatologic circumstances, these coming after a 33-minute swim in a totally not-short-by-any-stretch-of-the-imagination swim.
Andres, for whom it is always sad (for us) when she dons her swim cap and helmet (she has big, beautiful dark hair, you see), rocked a 4:37:47, which was highlighted by amazing bike and run splits.
These fast girls were unaware of each others' positions during the race, Kort launching in the Competitive Wave (#1) and Andres, as is her preference, splashing with her fellow AGers in Wave #5. This may have allowed Kort and Michelle to Time Trial their respective butts off (Good news! Butts grow back!). In other words, their finish times may not have been as fast had they been allowed to physically key off each other. That could have turned the race into a more conservative cat-and-mouse sort of game.
The 3rd place girl was 2011 Square Lake champ Angie Schmidt, 42, who also podiumed (3rd) last March at what is arguably North America's most arduous tri-challenge, the Leadman Epic 125, which featured triple digit heat index, mountains-not-hills and Katrina-esque winds. Ang's time was 4:54:29, just 12 seconds faster than Sarah Braunhausen's. We don't know Sarah, but there's a girl with that name on Facebook who is thin and wears a white belt, that looks kind of cool on her. That Sarah Brausnchausen is into Rap and, for some disturbing reason, likes the totally bloody "Saw" movies.
ALSO: K-Swiss' beautiful and statuesque Gea Miller (photo above with BFF Jessica Reisner, who placed 16th in the Olympic race) was totally awesome on Saturday. She finished 6th overall in 5:04:08. Her finish line elation was positively infectious!
Yes, there is a lot more stuff to write about, but we're kinda tired. We'll cover the Liberty Olympic race in another post, and, who knows, maybe even toss in a few hundred more words about the half. And pardon the typos and un-repaired syntax. We tend to post our first drafts and don't edit until the next day, if at all.
