Race Coverage
Record Numbers & Repeat Champions...
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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 23:10
TRI-U-MAH - This has been our state's biggest indoor tri for a while now, and this year's turnout was by far the largest ever.
Typically about 200 athletes register and 160-180 ultimately show up and finish. This time, though, there were 179 individual finishers and 40 collegiate athletes. That's 219 line-crossers. Hopefully this marks a trend toward greater enrollment in outdoor races this summer. Fingers crossed.
Tri-U-Mah is not only our state's largest and longest (90 minutes broken into 30-minute segments) indoor swim-bike-run, it is also the most competitive. Leading the way for their respective genders were repeaters MICHAEL WEISSENBORN, who won here in 2017, and 2018 women's champ / future outdoor star PAIGE SCHULZ, who was very impressive in two outdoor starts last summer and is the prohibitive favorite for Rookie of the Year in 2019.
Though Paige didn't match her 2018 distance total, she missed it by a almost neglible 1/100th of a mile.
Weissenborn, however, was able to better his 2017 distance by more than four tenths of a mile, thus his eventual margin of victory was huge: 1.09 miles. Michael had great bike and run splits, but it was in the water where he truly excelled. Only REED STEELE, who expects to be first out of the water in almost every multi he enters, touched more walls....
Steele placed 3rd overall.
As expected, Shulz blew away her competition on the treadmill. She needed that effort to overtake PAM KOSANKE, who had a substantial lead after the first two legs, and ultimately finished in 2nd place. We looked at Pam's Facebook page. We learned that she is a marketing expert who loves dogs (top photo) and rugby.
Joining Pam K. on the Silver medal step was AUSTIN DOBBELS, who rocked the fastest bike split of the event. A UM grad, Austin is originally from Illinois and is into country music and The Walking Dead.
Taking the top spots in the collegiate competition were Wisconsin's IAN BORMETT, and The U's RACHEL ZILINSKAS (photo), who totally dominated the women's field. Rachel grew up in Indiana and did undergraduate work at the University of Georgia before becoming a Gopher. She is into bracelets, country music, romantic movies and the novels of Emily Bronte. Ian likes classic rock, Bill Murray movies and The Deadliest Catch, which is in its 14th season on the Discovery Channel.
