2nd Best of the US

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 this tasty bottle of wine...

which was given a good home in my belly when we had some dinner guests over last weekend.  It's always a nice touch to get stuff from a race that's actually useful. 

On race morning we were joined by Alex Hooke at the hotel and we managed to clown car all 4 of us plus our bikes into one vehicle for the 20 minute drive over to the race site.  While we were loading up it was absolutely perfect race weather - about 60 degrees and overcast with light winds.  By the time we got to the race it was already starting to cool down and the clouds were starting to look a bit threatening.

The BOUS race was held in conjunction with Leon's "World's Fastest" triathlon.  Whatever Leon's background is, he is a master of marketing and promotion.  I've never seen so much advertising plastered around a transition area/finish line before.  The race t-shirt looks like something you would see in NASCAR with all of the sponsor logos.  There was a pre-race flyover by military aircraft.  There were two guys buzzing around the start area on jetpacks (seriously).  If that weren't enough, they had a TV crew there.  I've been told that the race will air July 4th on Comcast SportsNet, although I'll have to get someone to record it for me since I don't have cable.  Or just bootleg it off the internet somehow.

As the defending BOUS champ I got a fair bit of attention from the cameras as I was setting up my transition area, so expect a few seconds of B roll footage of me taking my running shoes out of my backpack or something similarly mundane if you happen to catch the broadcast.  I also got interviewed by Robbie Ventura, which was awesome.  Hopefully I don't come off as a total spaz if they actually use it in the show.  In case you couldn't tell, having my every move documented by a film crew puts me a wee bit out of my comfort zone.

By the time the actual race started the weather had made the transition from perfect to downright awful.  The temps had dropped into the low 50's, a light rain started and the wind kicked up to a steady 20 miles an hour with gusts to who knows what.  I took that as my cue to suit up and get the hell in the water, because it was much warmer than the air at that point.  As a result I probably got a good 600-800 meters of warmup swimming in, which is a solid 500-700 more than I traditionally do.  Despite the industrial surroundings the water was pleasant and seemed reasonably clean.

Finally I made my way over to the start.  Both the male and female Best of the US competitors were lumped in with the male and female elite amateur wave in the Leon's race, so there were on the order of 150-200 of us starting at once.  Luckily it was an in-water start and the line was a couple hundred yards wide, so there was plenty of room for everyone and not too much contact.

There were some fast swimmers at this thing, so I found myself blown off the back of the lead pack before we even got to the first marker buoy.  Every time I sighted it looked like there were about 50 people in front of me, which was disheartening to say the least.  At the time I thought I was in the middle of one of my traditional epic fail 22+ minute swims that would take me out of contention right from the start.  Eventually, about 1/3 of the way in a female came past me kicking like a maniac and I settled in behind to draft.  While drafting a girl in a race is a serious blow to my manhood, it was a pretty decent boost to my swim speed.  I can't adequately describe how hard this girl was kicking.  It made it very easy to stay behind her even though the visibility in the water wasn't the greatest.

I rode Ms. Happy Feet all the way to the swim exit and passed about 5 people on the short run into transition.  When I saw an 18:55 split in the results my first thought was that it had to be at least 100 meters short but Marcus had it at 0.93mi on his Garmin (consider that imperial/metric conversion your homework), so who knows, maybe I'm finally starting to crack the code on open water swimming.

After an uneventful transition I got out on the road and passed another 10 or so guys in quick succession before the field started to thin out and it was only Adam Zucco, Colin Riley, Marcus and a couple other guys I didn't recognize out in front of me.

The bike course was pretty wild... 2 loops with 4 u-turns per lap and a couple sections of not-so-nice pavement.  I think this type of course plays to my advantage a bit since I do most of my riding in the city, so I'm used to sharp corners, evasive maneuvers and bombed out pavement.  It seems like a lot of triathletes, even relatively fast ones, don't like taking any chances in the corners and are unwilling and/or unable to spike their power to get back up to speed quickly afterward.  If you are willing/able to do those things you can pick up 5-10 seconds at every turn, which is a considerable advantage on this kind of course.

About midway through the first lap I passed Marcus and it was only Colin and Adam in front.  I didn't manage to catch Colin until about mile 18 or so, which just so happened to be in the "speed trap", which was a one mile section of the course that was separately timed.  Since I was going basically max effort all the way through there to try to make the pass stick I ended up posting the fastest time of the day, which earned me this sweet trophy:

Passing Colin and moving up into 2nd overall also earned me the privilege of having a TV moto hovering about 6 feet to my left for the rest of the ride.  Hopefully I didn't hit the camera with any snot rockets.

I stayed slightly in front of Colin all the way back to transition and made a pretty careful dismount since I knew my feet were going to be numb from the cold.  T2 was tough since my hands and feet were cold enough to make getting into my running shoes something I actually had to think about, but my time is right in line with the field so everyone else must have struggled a bit as well.

Colin came out of T2 right on my heels and we quickly closed the gap up to Adam.  Right about then Colin decided he had enough of my company and tore off up ahead, putting a solid 20 seconds on me by the time we hit the first mile marker.  I outran Colin pretty handily to win the 2011 BOUS Championship, so I had no idea what to make of this move.  I just kept plugging along at my usual 5:30-ish pace figuring he was either going to blow up and come back, or he simply got that much faster since 2011.  Either way I was more or less at max effort already so I didn't have much choice in the matter.

The run course is a straight out-and-back and is likely the flattest thing possible so there isn't a whole lot to say.  By the time we hit the turnaround Colin had grown the gap out to ~45 seconds, so absent a complete meltdown he was going to be out of reach.  The good news is that I was pretty secure in 2nd with a minute plus back to the rest of the field.  One of the two TV motos stayed with Colin and the other stayed with me for the entire run.  I figured they would have bounced around a bit since places 3-7 were tight enough that there was some actual action.  What they're going to do with 35 minutes of footage of me running by myself is beyond me, but that's not my problem I guess.

As near as I could tell from my vantage point the gap between me and Colin held steady after the turn and he crossed the line in 1:52:05 for the win while I held onto second at 1:52:54.  Jason West, a 20 year old kid I hadn't heard of before, made up some serious ground on the run, coming in about 30 seconds behind me to win the Leon's race, marking what will in all likelihood be the last time he's beaten by my old ass.  That dude can fly.  Mark Harms was the next finisher across the line, rounding out the Best of the US podium.

Marcus had an extremely solid day taking 5th in the Best of the US race, which gave us a pretty stout margin of victory in the men's team competition.  And Andi Meyers took 7th in the women's race, which gave us 3rd in the coed team competition.  Add in top 10 finishes by Alex Hooke and honorary Minnesotan Sean Cooley and Minnesota was represented quite well indeed.

So, while it would have been nice to repeat as champ, I gave it my best and it just wasn't in the cards this year.  Hats off to Colin for unleashing a serious dose of beastmode on the rest of us and taking the win in style, Marcus and Sean for being most excellent travel partners, and to Trudy Marshall and the rest of the BOUS organization for putting together a great race!