2014 Update

Well whaddya know?  Another winter has come and gone during which I posted exactly zero updates.  Although that's probably for the best.  Anything I may have written this winter would almost certainly have spun off into a rant about how soul-crushingly awful our weather is.

For the one or two of you keeping track of such things, you may have noticed that there has been a change in the banner ads to the right.  Starting this year, I'll be racing as part of the Gear West Bike and Triathlon Development Team.

This is a tad bit bittersweet because I have nothing but good things to say about TCMC, Dan Casebeer and everyone at Grand Performance.  It was actually a pretty tough decision to go elsewhere.

So that being said, why Gear West?  For me the thing that sets GWB&T apart from the rest of the pack is the degree of support they give to the local racing scene.  I'm not talking about individual support as in setting up racers with bikes and gear.  Bikes are a commodity.  Every shop is ordering out of the same set of catalogs.  They'll all be perfectly happy to take your money in exchange for a bike.

I'm talking about support of triathlon in the upper Midwest on a macro level.  Which shop's mechanics are out there wrenching in the transition area at 5AM?  Gear West.  Open up that drawer full of race t-shirts.  Which shop's logo is on 90% of them? Gear West.  Which shop completely breaks down their sales floor one night every fall to host the Minnesota Multisport Awards, only to have to put the whole thing back together to open up the next day?  Gear West.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  In terms of number and quality of local races and depth of competition, the Twin Cities area is inarguably in the top 5 nationally.  Gear West is a huge part of that.  In some alternate universe where GWB&T does not exist, there is still triathlon in Minnesota, but it is a mere shell of what we enjoy today.

Oh, and if you're just looking for a place to get your stuff, Gear West kicks ass at that too.  Go out there, walk in through the front door, past all the road and MTB stuff, hang a left at the counter and go into the back room.  I'm willing to bet that there are more high-end tri bikes in that single room than the rest of the shops in Minnesota put together.  Hell, look up.  At any given time there are more tri bikes hanging from hooks on that ceiling than most shops move in a year.

Speaking of bikes.  This currently resides in my garage...

That's a 2014 Trek Speed Concept 9 with Di2 11-speed.  I'm far too lazy to put the race wheels on (or clean my garage) to snap a picture, but believe me it's ballin' out of control.  Due to our remarkably shitty weather I've ridden it on the road a grand total of twice, but I can pretty confidently say...

On the subject of weather, it turns out if you go south and west of here it gets much, much better.  To that end, Tiff and I recently spent a long weekend in Vegas.  While there I rented a bike from a local shop and got in 3 pretty solid days of riding.  It's amazing how much more fun riding a bike is when you don't feel like the entire Earth is trying to fight you.  But the real highlight of the trip was making friends with one of the locals... 

 

That's a Gopherus agassizii, also known as a desert tortoise.  He was just chillin' in the center of a bike path.  I debated for a while whether or not I should move him off of the path, but in the end I decided not to.  The nearest road was a couple hundred yards away so he really wasn't in any danger sitting there.  Plus I remember reading somewhere that they sometimes void their bowels when picked up, which in addition to being somewhat gross can actually prove fatal to the tortoise if it can't find a water source relatively quickly afterward, which is an obvious problem in a desert.  Judging by this thing's size he's had a good 30 years to hone his survival skills, so I'm sure he's doing just fine.

2014 Race Schedule

If you want to jam a squirrel into my spokes, here's where you'll need to be:

5/10 - Oakdale Du

5/18 - Gear West Du

6/1 - Buffalo Olympic

6/7 - Liberty Half

6/22 - Best of the US

6/29 - Lake Waconia Tri

7/12 - LTF Tri

7/19 - Duathlon Nationals

7/20 - Heart of the Lakes Tri

8/9 - Age Group Nationals (Olympic)

8/10 - Age Group Nationals (Sprint)

8/17 - Pigman Half

9/20 - Leadman Bend