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Shifting Gears...

Wednesday, 07 May 2014 06:10

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

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. READ MORE