Race Coverage

Cryptozoological Matt-aphor...

Friday, 14 September 2012 02:10

Cryptozoology...

By Matthew Payne

AG NATIONALS RACE REPORT - Did you know Lake Champlain has a legit lake monster? Yep, sure does. His name is Champ. And he has his own Wikipedia page, several fan sites and is the mascot of my new 2nd favorite minor league baseball team. My favorite minor league baseball team would naturally be the Beloit Snappers. I judge minor league baseball teams purely on the awesomeness of their mascot.

Anyway, I recently headed out to Vermont to search for lake monsters race USAT Age Group Nationals. Since my aunt, uncle and grandmother live in New Hampshire just a couple hours south of Burlington, Tiff and Michael came along as well. Speaking of Mikey, he's a full on walker now...

He's still in the Frankenstein/straight arms and legs stage, but I have faith that he'll adopt my trademark T-rex running style soon enough.

The Pre-Race Jams

How hard do they party in Sweden? This hard...

The Race

Swim

My swimming A-game is a little like the elusive Champ. Somewhere I'm sure there's a grainy photo of me exiting the water in an Olympic distance race in under 20 minutes. Some less than credible people (they get in a pool at 6:30 every morning, so they must be at least a little nuts) could tell you about sets I've done in practice that indicate I should be a sub-20-in-a-wetsuit kind of guy. But somehow on race day I tend to find a way to make that not happen.

I got excited looking at the map of the swim course before the race this year because it looked like they got rid of the first turn. In 2011 there was a 90 degree turn right about at 200m. That turn buoy was the mother of all aquatic mosh pits. I probably would have had better luck standing up and walking over the top of people like a lumberjack on a log jam than I did trying to swim through there. On the map it looked like USAT listened to the complaints and gave us a straight shot out to ~600m, which would give the pack plenty of time to thin out and make the 1st turn much less of a fistfight. I was a bit disappointed when I showed up on race day to see that they set the course exactly the same as last year, shitty 1st turn and all. READ MORE