Race Previews
Payne Train Heading For Duluth...
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Wednesday, 26 August 2015 06:10
SUPERIOR MAN PREVIEW - We predict that a plethora of records will fall at next Sunday's Superior Man, the 2013 and 2014 Minnesota Race of the Year.
Why?
The exisiting records are soft, and for good reason. Hot, humid conditions, unprecedently so in 2013, influenced the first two years of the event. Last year, the swim courses needed to be abbreviated. The 70.3 became a 69.9, and the 41.5 was a 41.3.
So, it's going to be exciting to see how things unfold on Sunday. FYI, the current weather forecast is for a sunny day with temps ranging from 59 to 79 degrees and light winds. Of course, that will change. The American and European weather models haven't been too accurate this year, have they?
It's time to go with the "Central American Model."
What is that? ...
We asked a guy from Belize named Larry (he wasn't born in Belize) if her thought the weather would be favorable for the race. He said it would be really good. We were hoping he'd say it would be "muy bueno," which is Spanish for "really good," but we later learned that English, not Spanish, is the primary language of Belize. Who knew?
With great weather on tap, it's time to make some totally ballsy predictions.
- SEAN COOLEY will not win for the 4th straight year. There's two muy bueno reasons for this. First, he's working until midnight at a Twin Cities hospital on the eve of the race, undoubtedly doing lots of surgeries, especially "ectomies," the kind of surgeres where you take stuff out. This kind of work is very tiring and his lovely ginger haired girlfriend Hanna would have to drive him to Duluth so he could get a few hours of sleep.
But Hanna is a bubbly person who likes to talk. If she talks a lot while she drives, Sean, who loves her too much to complain, will not get much actual sleep, certainly not many REMs, which are very helpful before big races.
And the second reason is that MATT PAYNE will be racing and he is still pissed about DNFing at Pigman. Payne's goal is to break 4-hours. He's done a 4:02. Yes, we see a sub-4 for him, which would not only be a race record, it would be a state record. His current 4:02 is just a few seconds off Kevin O'Connor's state record, set at Muncie in 1997.
- We couldn't be more excited about the women's Half IM. We expect a great battle between Kortney Haag, who has six wins at this distance in her career but has not been at the tippy-top of her game this season, reigning Toughman Champ Kelly Trom, and occasional triathlete / super endurance studette Nicole Cueno. Haag has the experience. Trom is emerging. And Cueno never fails to surprise. If she (Cueno) is within 8-9 minutes of the leader when she arrives in T2, she's our pick to win.
The time needed to come out on top? It will be in the 4:30s, we're sure. Our unequivocal pick: Trom. Or Haag. Cueno, maybe.
- We expect most AG CRs to be rewritten, and expect the following athletes to lower their divisonal records by especially humongous margins: Danny Morwood (40-44M), Leanne Bronson (45-49W), Sheri Shrock (60-64W).
In the companion 41.5 mile event (.5 - 34.5 -5.6), we expect Lisa Lendway to kick some serious butt, which is really the wrong way to say it. She should seriously kick some butt. It is not the butts that are serious here and require adjectival modification. It's the verb "kick" that benefits from the adverbial support of the word "seriously."
Still, it sounds cooler to say she'll kick some serious butt, than it is to say that she will seriously kick some butt.
Who will be Lendway's 41.5 co-champ? We do not believe that the men's winner will come from the early list we perused. He may have signed up since that list was emailed, or will do so in the final days leading up to the race, which is something you can do. (Race day enrollment is available, too!)
