The store would not let me in.
I was trying to buy the Team USA duathlon kit and, if it existed, a special kit for national champions. The gear lived behind a private section of the ROKA store. My account did not show it.
This was the slightly ridiculous follow-up to winning my age group at Duathlon Nationals three months earlier.
USA Triathlon had just sent another piece of recognition. Because I finished in the top ten of my age group at the national championship, I had earned Event All-American status. The note came with a certificate and access to an All-American store.
I still wanted the race kit.
Support told me where the USA Triathlon section should appear. It did not. They added my account. It still did not. I sent a screenshot, waited, logged in again, and wrote, “I am sorry to be a pest.”
By Tuesday afternoon, I was finally in.
Then I asked the actual question. Was there a different national champion kit? I thought winners traditionally had access to a red version. The support person congratulated me but did not know of one. If it existed, they said, it would be in the section I could now see.
It was not there.
The photograph from that weekend shows Amanda and me stopped during a New York ride. I am wearing a black jersey covered in white type. No flag colors. No red champion kit. Just the same cycling gear I already owned and a very large smile.
The official language mattered. I was an age-group national champion and an Event All-American. Neither one meant I had raced internationally for Team USA, and I was not going to turn a shopping login into that claim.
The title was real. The certificate was real. The red kit remained theoretical.