Race Coverage

Lead & Tread...

Tuesday, 24 September 2013 02:10

LEADMAN EPIC - BEND - St. Paul's Heather Lendway and Columbia Heights' Matt Payne clearly demonstrated their Star Power in Bend, Oregon last Saturday. Lendway collected her 10th career win in the 125K tri and Payne finished 2nd overall in the 250K.

The distances, though longer than Half and Full IM, are configured to produce finishing times similar to those turned in on 70.3 and 224K courses. This is accomplished by significantly lengthening the swim and bike legs, and shortening the run portion. The point is to create a Half or full IM experience that is easier to recover from.

Heather's time on the mountainous course was an amazing 4:29:50, which was 26:13 faster than the women's winning time (on a slightly different course) in 2012, and 7:40 faster than her nearest challenger, former Canadian pro Donna Phalen. Four Minnesota women rocked Top 10 performances: Lendway (1st), CathyYndestad, last year's 250 amateur champ (3rd - 4:44:39), Patti Schmidt-Iverson (8th-5:06:43, an almost 31-minute improvement on her 2012 time here) and Julie Hull (9th - 5:18:32).

Payne's ultra-distance debut produced an awesome 9:08:11, which placed him 2:56 behind winner Ray Fiori of Albany, Oregon, and 13:31 in front of 3rd placer, Gerry Marvin of Seattle.

Heather Lendway's race report will post tomorrow. We assume that Matt will blog about his experience. When he does, we will post that story, which promises to be a total HOOT! LEADMAN RESULTS

TREADMAN VIII - There were 154 finishers at this year's race in Pine Island. Coming out on top was Ann Moyer (photo L), who posted one of the fastest women's times in event history, and transplanted Kiwi, David Phillips, who was also victorious at Maple Grove Sprint and Graniteman-St. Cloud. The AG preformance of the day belonged to Jim Hannon, 55, whose 1:41:17 crushed his division's CR and landed him in 5th place overall. RESULTS