Race Previews

Happy "Lycra" Anniversary...

Thursday, 27 August 2015 00:10

LAKES COUNTRY TRIATHLON PREVIEW - If you can believe it, this race will celebrate its 16th anniversary next Sunday. In case you didn't know, there are special terms for the first 15 anniversaries, and for the 20th, 25th, 50th etc. Last year, the Lakes Country event celebrated it's "Crystal" anniversary.

It's a shame that the official anniversary namers didn't give year number-16 a special name, so we will.

The Lakes Country Tri will celebrate its "Lycra" anniversary on Sunday.

We digress.

There are only two races next weekend. In addition to Lakes Co., there is the Superior Man. We certainly hope that Minnesota triathletes support both of these great events. With this said, we remind you that online registration for Lakes Country ends tonight at one minute before midnight, so act quickly. Race organizers would love to see a huge influx of participants this week, and so do we.

So, now for some predictions.

New course distances were introduced last year (.25-14-3.2) and Michelle Andres' women's CR (1:04:27) is stout. We believe it will not be broken, unless Andres herself is a late registrant.

As for the men's mark (1:03:18), it should go down hard. Larry Hosch, who is arguably the co-frontrunner (with Bennett Isabella) for this year's Most Improved award, should not only record his 3rd W of the 2015 season, he should do so in a sub-1 hour time, weather permitting. We're feeling a 59:45 and are anxious to see how the men's race shakes out.

We think the women's race will come down to a womana-a-womana deal between 2014 runner-up Jacquelyn Bacigalupi, who's enjoying a breakout season, and 2013 Lakes Co. winner Sara Samsell-Jones, who in case you didn't know, is a former college basketball player, which we think is really cool.