Race Coverage

Soggy Sunday...

Monday, 20 May 2013 04:10

Gear West Du XXI - MTN contacted Suzie Fox after she won 21st edition of the Gear West Duathlon on Sunday. We asked if she was going to blog about her experience. This was her reply:

"It was muddier and swampier than ever which made it all the more fun! New course too. I will try to write something up in the next day or so. Wasn't sure that I would be okay to race but it worked out. Hope Albert Lea had better weather than we did." She followed this with another comment: "Really impressive race for Jared Smith, he's improved."

Smith (photo below) finished 4th against a Who's Who field. He placed 5th here in 2012. Guy's gettin' good....

For those of you who may not know, Suzie had a bike crash recently and her decision to race on Sunday was, as they say in football, "a game-time decision." Still, she raced in the sloppier than usual conditions and won by almost a minute over fellow studette (2011 Minnesota Triathlete of the Year et al), Claire Bootsma, who was born in Malawi, which is a overpopulated little country in East Africa that grows great coffee and has lots of goats.

T'was Suzie's 12th career multisport victory, fourth in a run-bike-run. Places 3rd through fifth on Soggy Sunday went to Kortney Haag, Julie Hull and Jen Scudiero. As you can tell, the field was was a deep as a Florida sinkhole.

The men's race was crazy deep, too. 2012 pro and amateur Duathletes of the Year, Dan Hedgecock and Patrick Parish went 1-2, and Brooksie Grossinger wasn't far behind them. Only 36 seconds separated him from PP.

Check out the official results. You'll note that several national and world-level masters totally rocked socks, e.g. Tony Schiller, 55, (8th!), Derek Hager, 51 (17th), Julia Weisbecker, 47 (6th), Ann Snuggerud, 45 (8th) and Jan Guenther 53 (10th). GWD RESULTS

A significant percentage of GWD participants will also be racing at next Saturday's Apple Duathlon Worlds Qualifier in Sartell. Have you signed up yet? APPLE WEBSITE

NOTE: MTN will post Suzie's race report on Thursday.

ALSO: We received an email from a guy, who said:

Hedgecock even crashed on his bike at full speed (his own fault) going head over heels into the ditch. He got up, climbed out of the grass, remounted and continued to race to a commanding victory.

We agree with the email guy: Dan's a total stud!