Race Coverage

Heather is the Real Deal. And Other Stuff.....

Monday, 27 April 2015 06:10

Photo - St. Anthony's Top 3 - Heather Lendway (3rd), Alicia Kaye (1st) and Magali Tesseyre (2nd), who is tiny and cute and has a cool French accent.

HEATHER LENDWAY - In case you haven't already heard, St. Paul's rookie pro Heather Lendway finished on the podium at the prestigious St. Anthony's Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Florida last Sunday. It was a day where toughness trumped speed. Heat, humidity, wind and warm, rippy, slow water meant that records would stay put for at least another year.

Heather led the way in the swim, which earned her a $500 bonus, muscled through the bike course in the 3rd fastest pro time and hung tough during the run. In the end, only veteran superstars Alicia Kaye, now a two-time St. A's champ, and Magali Tisseyre, managed to finish ahead of her. For her bronze medal effort, HL picked is $3250, thus her total payday was $3750. RESULTS

Heather will be blogging about her race later in the week. We are anxious to repost her story. Way to go, Ms. Lendway.

PREDICTION: Though there was a larger-than-usual influx of female rookie pros in 2015, we believe that Heather Lendway will be named pro Rookie of the Year when the dust settles next fall....

ED. Mick Bakker, formerly from Detroit Lakes, now lives in Anchorage, Alaska. He returned to Loon Land last week to visit family and race at the Morris Tinman. A great guy who repped Alaska at BOUS last year, he sent us this mini-race report:

Hey  MTN Guys,

Thanks for the shout out on MN Tri News (love your website by the way). And I really appreciated the effort and time  you all put in to BOUS last year. I'm just sorry I blew up so spectacularly on the run. I hope to come back some day and do it justice.

UM-Morris really puts on a top notch event. Great director, good volunteers and a fun course.

It was a very cool morning. 43 degrees with an easterly wind. Wet roads as it had rained the night before, but pretty dry by race time. Olympic-ish group went first. Circle swim in the pool. I had a good group in my lane and we hung together for the first half. I was able to pull away and finished a lap ahead of by the end of the 1100 yds.

 I did not do my race recon like I should have and took a left instead of a right at highway 59. Once I realized the error, was able to turn around and get going the right direction. It was cold heading east into the wind; but fun after the turn around and sitting at around 30 mph for the return leg. 2nd place male( i forgot his name) was about a minute back at the bike turn around. He slowly gained some time back and he was just entering T2 as I was heading out. I did not know his run form, but he looked light and fast so I new I had to push.
Run course was beautiful. Nice paved bike path that follows the Pomme de Terre River Park. Flat, with some twists and turns.  I was able to hold about a 20-30 sec lead thru the run, but I kept expecting to hear those dreaded footsteps so I pushed hard miles 4-6 and was able to negative split for a total run time of 39:26 and take the win. Definitely not Matthew Payne numbers, but a PR for me.

I'm looking forward to following the 2015 MN racing seen from Alaska. Being from Detroit Lakes, I always love to see what's going on with the Triathletes down here. Thank you for all that you do. - Mick Bakker (Anchorage, AK)

ED. The MTN Guys incorrectly predicted that Mick would finish 2nd behind last year's runner-up, Paul Wymer (Selfie with boat photo), who placed 5th in Morris on Saturday. Our Bad, Nick. We did predict that Sheena Dauer would win the women's race. We were right about that.In fact, she rocked a 3rd place overall finish. Our gut tells us that 2015 will be a breakout year for Sheena.

The Tinman's companion sprint event was won by Dakotans Tony Schwan (Aberdeen, SD) and Kali Anderson (Fargo, ND).

RACE RESULTS - Olympic-ish - Sprint