Race Coverage
Zero Flat Turtles & Ruthless Canucks...
-
Monday, 24 June 2013 01:10
ED. Matt Payne is a HOOT! We love the guy, and we love his entertaining race reports. His Liberty report is a "must read."
By Matt Payne (matthew-payne.blogspot.com)
Liberty Race Report - So I was back in action last weekend at the Liberty Half Iron. Since Liberty is a Saturday race and BOUS was a Sunday, that left me with only 6 days to recover. Normally that wouldn't be an issue as I'm typically feeling fully recovered from a hard Olympic distance effort within 2-3 days, but for some reason when I woke up the day after BOUS both of my calves cramped up and never really loosened up at all. Hopefully this has something to do with the fact that it was so cold at BOUS and it's not just the new normal as I get older. If that's the case my days of racing on back to back weekends may be over.
I've done Liberty twice before, in 2008 and 2009. The last few years I've opted to race Trinona instead, but with out of town travel the previous two weekends I really didn't want to make it 3, and I've grudgingly come to accept the reality that I'm a better 70.3 than Olympic distance racer anyway. So... eff it, let's fire it up for a half iron 6 days after BOUS and hope for the best.
The Pre-Race Jams
Warning... nostalgia trip incoming!
I remember going to my first "real" concert back when I was a 15 year old high school sophomore in Mankato. Up to that point, the only live music I got to see was the shitty teenage bands I and my friends played in. But on this day my friend Jeremy had a newly-minted driver's license and permission to use his parents' van, so a half dozen of us piled into said van and made the trek up Hwy. 169 to the promised land of Minneapolis and the legendary First Avenue.
We were going to see Helmet and Quicksand, who were (and still are) two of my all-time favorite bands, along with an opening act called Orange 9mm that I had never heard of. When Orange 9mm took the stage I was blown away. I had never heard anything that sounded even remotely like that. During their set they tossed a bunch of promo cassette tapes off the stage and I snagged one. This was the first song on it... READ MORE
ALSO - Chisago Lakes Half & Sprint's enrollment ceiling this year is 1600 participants and the race is filling fast. If you want in, you need to act quickly.
