Thursday, September 2, 2010

Mosquito Man Predictions

Official Logo, stolen by me from gearwestbike.com in order to promote their race

After consulting with my team of analysts (ok, one other guy and punching names into http://www.athlinks.com/), I've come up with the following predictions for the MosquitoMan Du. 

Solo Men

Dan Hedgecock should top the podium.  Charlie Roach will take his AG.   He's 52, but don't tell him that because he'll also be in the running for a top 3 overall finish, but I plan to race for the podium as well.   We could also consider Steve Stenzel to be in the mix because he did land 5th at Waseca in the sprint race. Because my co-predictor is a 45-49 age grouper, but not racing the Mosquito, he thought to throw in his AG prediction of LaVelle for that AG, but said that Sullivan rings a bell for some reason.
NEWS FLASH: Stenzel has thrown down the gauntlet.  Not to challenge the podium in the Mens Division, but he wants WILCOX.

Solo Women

Obvious choices for top spots are Jenny Wilcox and Julie Hull.  Some du's are bike heavy, some are run heavy--the MosquitoMan is transition heavy.  This match up could be won in the T-zone. According to athlinks.com data (I didn't go to the actual race-sites) head to head, Wilcox edged out Hull by only 29 seconds at Minneman and won by about a minute in a half at Gear West Du--both this year.

Teams 

This is where it gets interesting.  Just by a head count alone, the multisport talent is swarming in this group.  As mentioned in the BRING DEET post below, adding to the "du'niqueness" of this race is that the Team competition is not a relay, but will be done Team Time Trial (TTT) format.  Each two person team can TT the bike section together as drafting will be permitted (not for solo/individual entrants though).  Then the final time is determined by the second person on the team crossing the the finish line.  There is so much talent hear its hard to predict.  They didn't stop at Male, Female, Co-Ed--they have Significant Other and Corporate divisions as well. 
CO-ED- Hankee/Petree
FEMALE- Neuman/Oden or Barton/McJilton or Gokey/O'Connor (that's actually all the female teams entered : )
MALE- Bonner/Bich.  Also consider Lovaas/Hendrickson, Ward/Hankee, and Homme/Schmeichel
SIGNIFICANT OTHER- The McGaver's
CORPORATE- no teams entered at the time this was written

There are others that could surprise us in the team race depending on their ability to TT together so please check the list to see the stellar athletes in this race.  SOLO list  -  TEAM list

2 comments:

Brian said...

Dan, Mario, Charlie. That's my Top 3 prediction and I'm sticking to it. If you don't podium, you have to ride a trike in your next race.

Overnight low on Fri of 47, winds from NW at 12MPH.

Steve Stenzel said...

Man this should be a fun race!! I'm ALL about running now that I'm in full TC 10 Mile training, so my bike is a HUGE "X" factor. My race is going to look like this: near the top, being passed like crazy, passing like crazy, being passed like, passing like crazy. Where I end up is anyone's guess!

See you this weekend!