InlineSkateMpls

The Friday night 340 meter sprint started on the dry side of approaching thunderstorms.  All skaters strapped on their copper helmets for a little extra juice from the lightening and dished out static electricity shocks.  Herb squeaked like a little girl when Jason Mann gave him a little zap.  Then the horn went off at the same time the rain started.  All skaters bolted across the line as about seven spectators crowded under Andy Uttke’s little umbrella.  The race was fast and wet and everyone finished fully soaked and nobody crashed.

Saturday’s 10K and time trial started under water.  Mike Dez took a slider on the wet spot and did his trademark controlled crash cartwheel over the curb and into the grass, bounced back and got 3:43 and change.

Sunday’s marathon was drier and sunny but hot and muggy.  Cale started the full marathon with the usual announcement of no cross gender drafting, no cross category drafting, but cross-dressing was okay as long as it didn’t cross any category.  Elite waves started at two minute intervals to make sure each category had its own race.  The course was nicely laid out and clearly marked at the turns, even at the goose-poop cobblestone corner.  Incidentally, this is where the always frugal Dave “Hey Brother” Swannie caught his dinner the night before.

The horse you saw on the course was a product of Mike Dez and Ovid.  They had a few beers and drove to Faber College’s administrative building Saturday night.  They pulled the stuffed white horse from dean’s office and crammed it into the SUV, took it to their hotel room, dressed it up with lipstick and nylons, put some skates and a skirt on it and set it on the course over the rumble strips on the frontage road. 

When the race and awards were over John Schulte crawled into his van.  As he did Jeff Bach distracted him by asking about the race while Jason, Mike and Ovid crept up from behind and tied the horse to the trailer hitch.  When they finished they came around to the front and told him to have a safe trip as he drove off.  Someone in Madison caught it on video and you can now see it on You Tube.

Race times don’t appear to be available yet, but overall the weekend saw a lot of racers and well run.  Thanks to Old Man Carvell and crew for putting together a good show.

Preliminary results are at here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Collins Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.