XTERRA Torn Shirt Race Report

By Todd Scott, XTERRA Rep

BRIGHTON, MICHIGAN: It was another great day for racing at Michigan's seventh annual XTERRA Torn Shirt race.

While the run and bike courses remained unchanged, the swim was switched to two smaller loops.  This was more spectator friendly as the athletes had to run a short section of the Brighton beach before jumping back in for a second round.

The star of the swim was hometown's Marybeth Hall.  Hall is just a junior in high school and already an All American swimmer.  Not only did she have the fastest overall swim of the day, she started in the second wave and had the swim through most of the field.

The fastest male on the swim was Joe Deighan racing for Team Mongo.

But once out of the bike course, local XTERRA rocket Ryan Decook took over.  Decook averaged a blistering 13.2 MPH on the dirt road and singletrack mix.  He opened a huge five minute gap on everyone by the end of the bike.

The bike course ate up a few of the perennial front-runners as Jim James suffered flat tires while Tim Menoher snapped his bottom bracket. Many other racers returned with dirt tattoos from unplanned bike dismounts.

There was no such bad luck for Mindy Houser of West Bloomfield, Michigan.  No other woman could touch her on the bike.  Houser moved her way through the pack and became the lead woman on the course.  She continued that top performance with a solid run -- the fastest woman's split! 

All combined, Houser finished with a commanding lead over the pack with a time of 2:27:59.  In second place was Melissa Sunderman who posted solid across the board splits, while Marne Smiley rounded out the top three.

Among the men, Decook extended his lead with a wickedly quick sub-7 minute pace run.  Anyone that's run Torn Shirt will understand what a feat that is.  He also broke the two hour mark, finishing at 1:56:31.

Chris Scott from Morrison, Illinois grabbed second overall after posting the second fastest run and bike splits of the day.  Road triathlete Joe Deighan from Beverly Hills, Michigan finished third.

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