training weekend

Or, more accurately, coaching weekend. Highlights included watching my eight-year-old daughter thread the needle on her new road bike.

Highly anxious moments included watching my eight-year-old daughter thread the needle on her new road bike.

However, in no time, she was drilling nose wheelies, skitching tows, and telling cars to get their driving balls back. Kidding aside, she is totally capable of riding miles in traffic (taking the sidewalk when it's smarter to do so) without my input. It's a beautiful thing. I had to move the tag-along over to a ss road bike, so her brother and I could keep up. Another highlight was having him as a stoker, feeling him kick it up a hill so we could beat her.

In other news, my wife finally did the women's track clinic at the Velodrome, two years after offhandedly opting in. For those of you not in on the joke, my daughter asked mom why she didn't race on Friday nights. Mom replied "why not?" - not really caring one way or the other, but mostly wanting to show her that it's fun to try new things, to race, even if it's all a little intimidating. Of course, that's all I needed to start building up a track bike. A long-lost friend of hers, who had messengered in Chicago ten years back, heard this and gifted her a Campy Record pursuit tubular wheelset (coincidentally built by Marcus), with the only condition "that she race them." So that's how she ended up with the nicest track bike in the family.

And the only one to hang in the basement, unridden for two years. And by unridden, I mean "never borne the pressure of a human on the saddle."

I'm not giving her grief on the subject, since it's about twelve thousand times more difficult to be supermom than it is to be me (especially being supermom in a family that has me in it, who practically counts as one of the kids, but with a salary). She missed a couple women's clinics in the meantime, until this last weekend.

Six tattooed and pierced women in their 20s, two experienced roadies in their 30s, and my wife. I should point out that she's so busy being supermom that she takes about one bike ride per year, in a triathlon. She half-jokingly introduced herself as "I don't know anything about this, I'm just here because my husband built this bike and told me to come to the clinic. He told me to get a picture to make sure I wasn't running off to get a pedicure." She got the impression that some of the tattooed ladies were rather scornful of the subservient picture she painted. If they only knew that she's the Generalissimo around here, and she signed up solely to be a role model for her daughter. Tattoos don't make you tough, ladies, try being Supermom.

I half expected her to come home terrified from her first fixed gear experience. In short: loved clocking laps, not so crazy about the racing. Partly because she doesn't feel particularly conditioned at the moment, but also because she didn't come to prove anything, unlike many of her classmates. She enjoyed the team pursuit a lot more than the miss and out. However, she informed me that she's still planning on following through with her promise; she is going to race some Friday. Two more weeks until opening night!