Bryan Brosious: Bozeman Triathlon

When the lake loop calls my name, even if it is before a race, I ride it because I am a Montana Grizzly Bear. Rooooaaaaaar!

*How can you pass this up?

*My bike was clean, my kit was sweet, and my hair was great, I had to ride.

*An hour in and "ahead" looked good.

*But, a storm was soon chasing me.

*I had to stay ahead of the storm so my bike, kit, and hair didn't get messed up.

*Looks ~~good~~ perfect to me.

*Climbing out of the basin.

*In the mountains

*Riding the edge of the storm. Ride Bryan, ride!

*The road to forever, just keep pedalin'.

*At one point I was surrounded by blowing fields.

A funny side note: Lexi, my Subway friend, always makes great sandwiches and asks about my races and I always knock on the window when I run by. It's always a treat to see her, I had one of her specialty subs to fuel up for the lake loop.

*Just the way I like it

*They pretty much do whatever I want, even slow down business for pics. "The customer is always right."

*Not to be out done, my dad slaved over the grill. We had the most delicious fish I have ever had. He caught the fish in the lake and cooked them with his own recipe.

*Lots of pre-race "treats."

There are people who spend thousands of dollars to come see the beauty of the places that I live and race in. We often times take for granted the picture of perfection we call home. We are lucky people, big city living...you can keep it, I have something better.

It has been a about 7 years since I moved from Bozeman, and I haven't been back much, but my friends at the race treated me like I never even left. It was great to be back and see my tri friends again. I should also add that my new friend, Royce Houge, did the long course race and had a successful day, great job to him.

*Tri friend, Dan Heil, he's a good guy. I saw him at the bike turn-around having a stellar race.

It was really nice to have my family there. My parents made the trip to cheer me on, take pictures, and wait for the excruciatingly slow awards. I felt bad because the awards took forever and they both waited. My sister, Mackenzie, cheered me on, it was nice to see her. I could hear my family all day. I also feel bad because I realized I didn't get a picture with my mom, I will have to do a better job at the next race. It was nice to have them all there.

*This is how my dad poses for pics with my sister.

*To my delight this is how he posed for my pic, and we wonder where Uriah gets his pic antics.

*Seriously, can you even take a more perfect picture?

*My wetsuit takes at least 10 minutes to put on...

*and I have to get it just right.

*My mom checking everything out before the swim.

The swim started and despite being pretty wild it was relatively smooth sailing. At the first buoy I was in third place. On the long backstretch my Teres Majors, the muscles on the back of my shoulders, became uncharacteristically tired. I let up a little and held position as we neared the swim exit. Dylan, a high school swim champ, put 61 seconds into my group of three that exited together behind him.

*Lots of people, anticipation.

*Lots of people, mayhem!

*The wetsuit that takes 10 mins to put on...

*...comes off in 10 seconds.

I had a really good transition and left in 2nd place. Dylan was out of sight after his amazing swim and I had to set to chase. The good news was that Dylan and I left the chasers on the bike. The course had a lot of turns and a lot of cornering. Some of the corners had excess chip seal gravel on them and that is scary. I found myself easing through most of the fast corners remembering that Floyd Landis broke his hip going too fast through gravel corners.

*A big thank you to my tri buddy, Phil Howard, for this action shot. I trained with him when I lived in Bozeman. It was great to see him again.

On the switchback of the big climb of the course I had a good look at the chasers. I consider it a "good look" because I didn't see any chasers. All the pressure of those chasing me was off as I rode away . The chase towards the front was still on, but I wasn't making up any ground on Dylan.

Nearing the end of the bike I could see Dylan way off in the distance. He was super in the swim, and just as strong on the bike, when the gaps didn't come down on the bike I knew I was in a tough spot. I don't usually feel the wind go out of my sails during a race. It's actually good to have that happen because it's a learning opportunity for me. Dylan did a great job on the bike and I did some learning about dealing with an unrewarded chase effort. :)

*Into transition 2

*Run boy, run!

The run of the is race was pretty sweet. It involved 2 miles of twisting, brush covered trail. The course was banked in spots so we flew down the 5 foot wide trail cut through the brush and banked hard through the twisting corners. I had a pretty good run, but lost some steam near the halfway point when I found myself out of touch with catching Dylan, and out of reach of any of my chasers. That's kind of a ohh-hmm spot in a race so I tried to enjoy the last of the twisting banked trail, and the final lap around the lake.

*See, Grizzly Bear snarl. Grrrrrrr

Here is where this post makes its money:

There is a very interesting thing that I have found in triathlon. I rarely follow other people's websites, and I try not to ask people how their training is or how their race went. I'd rather talk about other things. There are overwhelmingly negative undertones derived from all those inquiries. I find it quite frustrating actually. If I ask someone how their training is, the answer is always the same, "Oh, I'm not really training." Yeah right, if by "not training" they mean "I'm training 15 hours a week and harder than I ever have." then that would be a fair statement. I have friends who have spent the last 5 years "not training" yet they still set the fastest bike splits, run splits, win races, and finish Ironmans.

What is the point in that, just own it. The true damaging part of this sort of thing is to those who overhear it, those who finished 30th or 50th or whatever, and think they had a great race. When someone hears a fast person saying, "I had a terrible bike," or "I had a slow run," they look at their own time that is usually significantly slower than that "terrible bike," or "slow run," and all the feelings of accomplishment of anyone slower than a "terrible bike" or "slow run" are instantly diminished.

It's simply wrong, and I think we are all better than that.

If you ask how the race went, the negatives are always the lead remarks. Same thing with a lot of blogs. I got so tired of reading sad, negative race reports about nutrition problems, lack of training, legs falling off during the bike, volunteers with bazukas, blah, blah, that I gave up reading the reports because they make me sad. I like positive things and think it is very unfortunate when we justify our lack of winning by finding excuses rather than giving credit to the winner for going a better job on that day. Over the years I have even read race reports that included me in them that never once gave me any credit for doing a good job, they were all "I'm faster than him but I had a bad race," etc., etc. When I read those I always promise myself that I will do my best to not take away from other people's accomplishments and lead by example, win or lose.

I don't know why we all do this, but we do. Actually I do know why, it's ego. If we can justify why we didn't win then it makes us seem better, faster, stronger, cooler than "not winning." I have done this, we all have, but I recognized it a long time ago and have been on a mission to lead by example to not be this way. This race was a great opportunity to do this. It was actually really rewarding to just give credit to people for doing well in the race and not justifying my performance with anything other than "I did my best today."

My message is to congratulate people for doing a good job, not justify why I didn't go faster and detract from their accomplishment just to save a little ego.

After the race I had an interview with the Bozeman NBC anchor. My first question to him was, "Are you sure you don't want to interview the winner?" This is actually the second time that I have finished 2nd in a race and ended up on the news, how does that work? :) I was pretty pleased when a few friends texted me, "I just saw you on TV!"

*My advice to you is to cancel your cable because you wouldn't believe what they put on TV these days. ha ha

During the interview the anchor gave me the opportunity to justify my performance, "So Bryan, 2nd place today, tell us about the day, do you think you'll come back next year and try to win?"

This was my chance to lead by example, my reply was, "I always come to win, but 2nd place is good for today. The great thing about triathlon is we will try and tear each other apart going for the win, and then shake hands and laugh about it at the finish. I give Dylan all the credit in the world, he had a great race today, he deserved to win."

My humble hope is that people will read this and use it as a learning experience to make triathlon better, and more enjoyable for everyone by simply giving credit to other people rather than making up excuses to save a little ego, I think we will all be better off. I don't like "not winning," but what goes around comes around, so If I can be humble in both winning and "not winning" then hopefully those around me will see my example and be the same way.