Race Coverage

Manning Amazing...

Wednesday, 04 January 2023 00:12

GREEN LAKE TRIATHLON COVERAGE - Who are the frontruners for 2022 Performance of the Year nominations? If we include local pros TED and  DANI TREISE, the list would include Ted's record-setting performances at Buffalo Olympic and Tri West, and Dani's six-minute win at Buffalo.

Top amateur efforts? Certainly PRESTON YOUNGDAHL's trashing of the course record at Clearwater is worthy, as is HENRY JESSEN's 7th place finish at Olympic Nationals. Former pro HEATHER LENDWAY's race at Timberman is clearly the best effort by an amateur Minnesota woman thus far in '22, and we suspect her upcoming performance at Maple Grove will be in the same league....

The most recent performance that deserves serious consideration happened last Sunday at Green Lake. AJ MANNING, who blew away GL's Sprint record in 2021,  returned and wanted to treat the Olympic record the same way. Easier said than done. Marcus Stromberg's 1:41:53 on the .75 - 24 - 6 course had stood since 2012, nevertheless, AJ felt prepared to take it down. (His record result at the HyVee Triathlon in Watertown, South Dakota in early July demonstrated that he was ready.)

Manning started with the fastest swim of the day, and what a perfect day for racing it was. Mild temps and almost windless. He biked alone, minutes ahead of the field. He was almost two miles into the run before his fellow Olympic racers hit the dismount line.

The five-30 miles clicked off one-by-one. 

Manning didn't just break the record. He broke it by an elephantine margin. His time was 1:35:31. Records are made to be broken they say, and Stromberg's ten-year-old mark had finally been rewritten, and by a 6:32 margin to boot. (Had the run course been a mile longer, AJ would have stil beaten the record by a full minute.)

Performance of the Year nomination-worthy? Oh yeah.

The great weather and the motivation provided by AJ's off-the-front racing resulted in  additional fast times. A recod seven guys, starting with local triathlete MICK QUINN, followed 25-seconds later by Twin Citizen MIKE WENTE, managed to crack the  two-hour mark. The last time more than seven men broke two-hours her was in 2013, when nine men accomplished that. 

Rochester's MERILEA OSTERLUND, 47, has raced GL Olympic four times. In 2018, she finished 8th in 2:34:47. She was faster in 2018, her time improving by eleven minutes and she finished in 3rd place. Then in 2020, she matched her placement, and her time was her best to date: 2:07:30. On Sunday she was unable to better her time, but more imprortantly, she bettered her place. She won the women's race. Her 2:08:57 put her 1:37 ahead of her closest rival, Sauk Rapids' TONYA PICK (photo L) and 2:49 ahead of 3rd placer BRYN IREY  ofWest Fargo, ND. 

Eighty-four of the event's total 353 entrants were registered in the OLympic race. Sprint coverage will post later in the week. RESULTS