Great team members makes for an amazing team!

This weekend was the Bottomless lakes triathlon in Roswell NM. The bottomless lakes tri was going to be the state club championships race. Last year the Outlaws won the club championships, we were hoping to repeat, a feat that has only been done by one other team before.



Sat night I met most of the club members that were there that night to race the following morning for dinner. I had an awesome time hanging out. Truly some wonderful people in our club. I was able to meet some triathletes there that were new on the team: Matt H, Michale L(more about Michael later), and his girl friend(can't remember her name). Great people, and a great time.



The town of Roswell only has about 50,000 people living there, and this weekend there were almost 50,000 visitors there to celebrate the UFO crashes that happened many years ago. After dinner we all watched a parade go down Main street, many people were dressed as Aliens, star wars characters, there was even a Santa Clause that had an outfit on that made it look like he was fighting an abduction. That one creeped me out:)



One of the Outlaws I met was Matt H. He is 19 and just completed the college nationals. He finished in 2:28 finishing 300th out of 500 competitors. Turns out the nationals was his first race ever! Can you imagine the pressure of your first race being the college national championships race? I ended up sharing a room with this guy. I was very impressed by him. very friendly, mature, really seemed to have his head on straight. I know I sure didn't at that age! He also had a real thirst for triathlon knowledge. I tried answering as many questions as I could, things like training by HR, how to test your HR, the importance of training in Z-1 & Z-2 to build mitochondria and capillaries, race equipment, the differences between tri and road bikes. This guy was a sponge. He caught on quick. While explaining bike fit(I did warn him I know very little about a good bike fit) I noticed he had an older Treck bike that he seemed to be taking very good care of. I knew his bike was older because it had the shifters on the bottom bar, but it was a Treck so I knew it was top end at the time it was new. I decided to pick up his bike to see how light an older bike like that would be. HOLLY COW! That sucker weighed more than my 21 month old daughter does! How the heck did he do an Oly in 2:28 pedaling a tank around! I pulled off one of his wheels and just about broke my back. Those wheels would be great for dumbbell curls, not for racing!



A quick side note here, I guess I acclimated to night shift better than i thought. I just laid there looking at the ceiling until 4am. Ah well, sleep is totally overrated.



The next day at the race sight I start telling some of my fellow Outlaws about Matt's tank-of-a-bike. Steve Hall goes over and offers to let Matt use his disk. Michael (one of the new members) without missing a beat tells Matt he could use his road bike to race. The bike is probably worth over 3 G's. The disk wheel is a HED-C. Also pretty dang expensive! The 2 of them offered this without ever meeting Matt before. They had no idea if the kid would take care of it or not. They just chose to trust in him blindly. I was touched and really proud to be an Outlaw. Great team members makes for a an amazing team.



Matt finished the race which consisted of a 400 meter swim, 14K bike, 4K run in 48:02 finishing 6th place overall! 1st place 19 and under! Very impressive! Steve Hall(the guy who lent his disk) ended up taking 3rd place overall. Michael L(the guy who lent his bike) took 7th overall. I took 2nd place Clyd and placed 30th overall. One of my Idols and Outlaw leader the Clydeologist took first place Clyd by crushing me by over 5 minutes!!!! Geek girl took(the clydeologists beautiful wife) took 1st place athena. Sw tri gal finished 2nd place even after having a pretty bad crash and getting road rash all over her face, her husband (whom I have to say is one of the most laid back great guys I've ever net) took 1st place in his div. Helen Crane took one of the top 3 in her div. Stuart, Helens husband raced an amazing race! I saw him on the run. He looked in allot of pain. But kept pushing long after most would of slowed to ease some of the pain. Seemed to me like almost every Outlaw there either placed top 3 or was dang close. It's not official yet, but I'm pretty sure the Outlaws won the NM team championships for a 2nd year in a row. No team has ever won it 3 years in a row. But I think with the kind of team work and camaraderie I saw that day there isn't another team out there that doesn't deserve it more than my fellow Outlaws!