Headlines

Sara Sampsell-Jones is Pretty Darn Cool...

February 29, 2012

Sara Sampsell-Jones is a lawyer and a former scrappy little point guard at Edina HS and later, albeit briefly, at Dartmouth. She still has several college sweatshirts and she wears them often, albeit one at a time. Her husband Ted, who went to Yale and thus refuses to wear his wife's sweatshirts, is really, really fixated, albeit not in a sick way, on women's basketball, especially on the collegiate level, though he's really into the WNBA, too, and was totally stoked when Maya Moore signed with the Lynx. Since 2002, Ted and Sara have co-authored "Women's Hoops Blog" (LINK) which features a totally cool cutline: "Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better." It is arguably the most read women's basketball blog in the U.S. (Ted and Sara have since turned over the Blog's editorial reins to people who have more time to devote to the site.)

How cool is all that!

Because she's not real tall, Sara can't dunk. But don't underestimate her. She's quick and her crossover dribble is deft and blurry-fast. She can take you to the hole in a blink. She prefers Caribou (Breakfast Blend) to Dunn Bros., pancakes over French toast and Ricky Rubio over Steve Nash. She doesn't play hoops as much as she used to. That lawyering thing gets in the way, as does the fact that she is raising one or two excrutiatingly cute children....

London or Kona?

February 28, 2012

Which is the BIGGER triathlon event in 2012: Kona or Olympics?

By Darin Wieneke

The triathlon headlines in early 2012 have featured lots of exciting news about both the 2012 Olympics and Ironman World Championships (Kona). Examples include Olympic favorite Alistair Brownlee suffering an Achilles tear, Lance Armstrong's plan to qualify for Kona and Chrissie Wellington’s decision not to race at Kona in 2012. These announcements caused me to ponder the question: Which is the bigger triathlon event in 2012: Kona or Olympics?

At first blush, the obvious answer would seem to be Kona. The annual field includes our sport's most talented and fit competitors. It is a race on every triathlete's bucket list. It receives great coverage and viewership on NBC, as well as extensive coverage in other forms of media. And frankly, people remember the winners of this race like no other. We have all heard of Paula Newby-Fraser, Dave Scott, Craig Alexander and Mirinda Carfrae.

Weekend Event Coverage...& Stuff...

February 28, 2012

* THE ICEMAN COMETH - The 2012 Iceman Triathlon, which is really a quadrathlon--xc skiing, mountain biking, running and sledding--was staged at Lincoln Park in Grand Forks last weekend. Nearly 90 athletes participated. Unsurprisingly, ND's numero uno multisportsman and total horndog, Sean Cooley, cameth across the finish line firsteth for the dudes. Comething in firsteth for the girls was Alison Kelly who has blond hair, lives in Bismarck but grew up in West Fargo and has 366 Facebook friends. RESULTS

* Life Time - Maple Grove - The best-attended of the first three 2012 Life Time Indoor Tris was held last Sunday at LTF's Maple Grove club. Eighty one swim-bike-runners participated. Leading the way was Nick Shultz, who grew up in Cokato and likes "30 Rock" and "Bananagrams."...

Pencil Tappers & Mice in the Silverware Drawer...

February 27, 2012

Going Off Course - Northfield swim coach / triathlete, Brooke Larsen, is a really, really nice person. She is also very smart and pretty and speaks pretty good Spanish, which serves her well at Mexican restaurants like Taco Bell and El Tequila. Most of the time she appears calm and unflappable, but there are a few things that really make her crazy.

Like what?

Pencil tappers, that's what! Don't even think about tapping your pencil if Brooke is within earshot. It sends her into a tizzy!

Another thing that drives Ms. Larsen nuts is mice in the house. We're totally with her on this one. Few things are more enervating than finding mouse turds in your silverware drawer, right?

Brooke is still kinda bummed about "24" being cancelled but she's hanging in there. A typical evening at her house these days consists of reading the...

Indoor Tri-ing...

February 26, 2012

Event Coverage - We intended to post coverage of last Sunday's Life Time - St. Louis Park Indoor Tri on Thursday. We spent about 90 minutes writing and laying out the story then we clicked the "Save" icon, but the post didn't save!

Our computer lied!

This has happened to us a half dozen times over the last year and it makes us so angry that we could just spit! And yes, we could have written the story in a word doc first, so we wouldn't have to rewrite the dang thing, but we didn't. Our bad.

Well, a few days have passed, we've taken our meds and are ready to write the story again....

Clinic Stuff...

February 25, 2012

By Erika Sperl-Imhoff

So you signed up for your first triathlon...

Other than the I’m so ƒ®¡©&¡ñ& excited!! thoughts running through your mind, you might also have a few that sound more like what did I get myself into?! SPDs, bricks, discs, down tubes, T2s, special needs, supination, a floating start… it might feel like you need to learn a whole new language to just keep your head above water!

The YWCA would like to fix that.

In addition to the YWCA Women’s Triathlon (LINK)  - a wonderful race not only for those new to the sport but also the speedyspeedy a la Claire Bootsma and Kortney Haag – the Y is putting on several clinics throughout the months...