Race Coverage

House Money, Clown Cars & Riding Miss Happy Feet...

Friday, 21 June 2013 01:10

By Matt Payne (matthew-payne.blogspot.com)

A couple weeks ago I road tripped it down to scenic (as an engineer, oil refineries and steel mills do count as scenic) Hammond, IN to attempt to defend my title at the Best of the US amateur triathlon championship. I managed to put together a fairly decent race, but still only came away with 2nd place.

After races like this I have to sort of step back and remind myself that I'm basically playing with house money at this point. What I mean is that when I toed the line at my first race six years ago I was overjoyed to simply finish (I took 82nd that day in case you're curious). Even qualifying for a race like this seemed like an impossible pipe dream. Competing for the win seemed downright ludicrous. Fast forward to 2013 and I can throw down a 1:53 at an Olympic distance race, finish second against a nationally competitive field and actually be somewhat....

disappointed. 2007 me would kick present-day me so hard in the nuts for that. Oh well, enough of the emo shit, here's a race report...

Sean Cooley and Marcus Stromberg were also making the trip, so we assembled at my place pre-dawn on Saturday and loaded up Marcus's truck for the drive. Those guys were great travel partners. I was expecting some resistance when I suggested we hit up the Old Chicago across the parking lot from our hotel for my traditional pre-race dinner of pizza and beer, but they were all about it. My people!

Trudy organized a special BOUS-only course briefing from the RD at our hotel, at which we also picked up or swag bags. We got some pretty cool stuff this year, including some boss level goggles.......and a tasty bottle of wine