insert your favorite tri pun here

As much as I love a good road race, I had to skip the State Championships today, even though it could have been my last race as a 5. Instead...I played support crew to Ella in the (kids') Chicago Triathlon.

Technically, this was her third one, but since the lake was creeping with microscopic bugs last year, it became a duathlon, and her other event at Oswegoland was kind of a "Are you ok after the swim? Here, take a rest and when you're ready, you can do the bike" kind of kids' event. (For the record, she got second in that one to a kid named Julia who's also been spotted at Northbrook.)

She was pumped. One kid was crying, many were nervous, but she was digging in the sand or rocking out to thumpy disco on the PA. In the early heats, we noticed a number of older kids pulling repeated butterfly dives off the bottom of the lake when the water was too deep to run in, and she was practicing those in the interminable standing around period. They helped quite a bit, both starting and finishing the swim.

If you don't get in early, you end up kind of walking through the water in a pack while a half dozen swimmers open a gap, so she got a great spot at the rope and protected it, even joking around with another racer, making fun of the big stupid clown at the start. She got in the water pretty well, and she was 11th coming out. She picked off a few spots to get into 8th before reaching transition.

We'd walked through transition earlier, and despite picking out some landmarks (at this garbage can, look for the American flag and the big tree) she lost a bit of time because there were two garbage cans, a bunch of flags, and a few trees. Oops. Next time we really should buy a silly balloon. Still, she found her bike pretty quickly, and thanks to mom's number belt and her awesome "tri-suit" (actually a bathing suit for four-year-olds) she didn't have to put on a shirt. She also skipped the socks, and it paid off big. She was in third coming out of T1!

The girls ahead of her also had "proper" road bikes, so she wasn't getting free Huffy time, she had to reel them in honestly. She was pretty solid in the bike, and other than one punk ass little shit who blocked her a bunch of times, saying "that's racing," thankfully that leg was uneventful. In the future she has permission to call kids like that Big Fat Losers and point out that they started four minutes ahead of her.

She came in to T2 in second place, and held it starting the run. I saw the leader and fed Ella her time gap, 20 seconds. A cranky woman with sharpie-numbered arms and skin like beef jerky scowled and said "You shouldn't tell her that." I laughed it off because the funny thing is, you might think that we're typical uber-parents who are overgrooming their kids for sports (er, um, guilty as charged on that, these kids have a frickin' stable of bikes), and that we're just pouring on the pressure, but she's so much more suited for this crap than I ever was. I remember wanting to barf before C-league baseball games, and she's lining up with 40 bigger girls, trading elbows, about to tear off into a scrum in Lake Michigan, and she's digging it.

I laughed even harder when I found out that my wife was 50 meters away, and she fed Ella the same time info! I guess we're both a little uber...but hey, some kids are out here to finish...so what if she's out here to win? It's a race, for chrissakes!

In the end, she gained about half the time back to finish her heat in second place, as it turns out, to the same girl who beat her in Oswegoland last year. Her age group had one other heat, and after they sorted the times, she finished 4th of 83! Holy Shit! Not bad for her first "real" triathlon. The best part was that all day she kept talking how much fun it was.

As a footnote, I have to add that I generally find triathletes wound a little too tight. I won't go into the whole Tri experience, the dorky Tri jokes on everyone's shirts, the Expo, the carbon-fiber shoelace aglets that everyone has to have, the conversation I overheard from a racer who made a spreadsheet of the magnesium/sodium levels of 20 sports drinks because he was suffering from cramps...you get the picture (for the record, a number of roadies fit that mold as well, and I've been known to geek out on training, but not like that). Then you have to factor in that parents with our socioeconomic status are often prepared to fight to the bloody death over a bad call on the soccer field...But the one thing that really bothered me was the fact that many, many of the parents were simply not cheering for anyone but their own kids. I had a clown horn, a rattling noisemaker, a cowbell, a camera, a 6-year-old, a wife out there somewhere texting me every two minutes, and an eye out for a kid in a day-glo orange suit, and I still yelled for every racer that went by. A disturbing number of people just stood there, clapped for their own kid, and then watched wave after wave of kids suffering just roll by. It makes me want to show up next year looking like Mysterio:

spend it if you got it

...isn't a great policy for winning races, especially if you don't have a whole lot to spare.

Downer's Grove Cat 5, Heat two

Got into top five after a couple and mostly stayed there. Seemed to be able to attack at will on the hill and the s/f, feeling it out. Not a lot of cornering skills on display in my heat, but nothing too sketchy as the course was plenty wide.

No major splits but the field seemed to be snapping back a little less each time. With three to go, one kid talked of making a break, but it turned out he was all talk. Four of us had a bit of a gap after the turn four climb, but only two of us put anything into it. I poured it on and tried to keep it on, but didn't get much help, at least not when it could've counted.

When I saw that no one was really up for it, I backed off and tried to recover, but the bell lap set everyone off, and I got a little swarmed. I should've taken my chances in the bunch sprint, as most everyone faded with 50 to go. 13th. whatever. I don't think of myself as a sprinter, but then I see how the other Cat 5s finish and realize that I should just go for it.

To add to my frustration, I wasn't allowed to sign up for heat three, as they were "trying to give everyone a chance to race." Turns out both heats were only 2/3rds full, but they still wouldn't let me jump in. grrr. I realize that's what pre-registration is for, but there were 17 open spots in heat three!

final four, a long overdue (alleycat) race report

The Bicycle Film Festival just pulled through Chicago. A citywide scavenger hunt, a Blues Brothers-themed alleycat, loads of short films, and a block party were all on the agenda.

Tacked on to the tail end of it all was a sprints and skids competition benefiting the largest and most utilitarian member of our team, the Cuttin' Cruiser. The fixed gear gang were doing backward loops, barspins, one-foot-through-the-frame skids, 180s and whatnot, but to be honest, they were kind of a sideshow compared to the flatland bmx-ers leftover from the earlier comp.

I sat out the IRO sprints, mostly on account of the fact that it seems like the kind of thing you do in a wintertime bar. For me the main event was the sprint comp. Two blocks long, one-on-one. Fairly small turnout at 30-something contestants, but nonetheless fun.

I'm not particularly experienced at these, but it seems like there's not a lot of strategy: just go for 30 seconds. It's a little longer than a simple sprint, but not long enough that there are any options for drafting or playing scratch games. I wasn't sure if I was in the right gear, wasn't sure I could get to speed quick enough, wasn't sure if I could spin out if someone in a steeper gear was reeling me in late. It's amazing how such a short event could still break down to a beginning, middle, and end.

My plan was to start hard-ish, and keep an eye on the other guy, and stay just ahead of him while conserving my energy for the later rounds. First round was harder than I expected, nerves and adrenaline pushing me to a 1-2 length win.

Second round I had the benefit of racing a guy who popped his chain. One less trip to the red zone.

Third round I raced my teammate Daryl. He was one of the guys I'd hoped not to race, but it was impossible to avoid those guys in the later rounds. I held him off, but I was helped by the fact that he spent his morning finishing 6th at Glencoe.

That put me in the final four. Somehow one of the bracket winners (Simon?) had been accidentally set aside, and so when he surfaced, he was thrown in for a three-man heat. I wasn't thrilled about it, as it gave me another pair of wheels to watch, but what can you do. Simon took it, and tying for third won me a pint of Ole Grand Dad, a fitting and useful prize (and apparently a third place tradition for Chicago alleycats).

In retrospect, as tricked out as my bike is, the low-spoke-count wheels were a little heavy off the line, but mostly I should've just hammered harder off the line and not bothered eyeballing the two other guys. There's also a distinct possibility that I'm just not as fast as the guy that beat me.

If there's some silver lining, it's that my teammate Stanley beat the guy that beat me, to take home the win. I jokingly harassed him that we had unfinished business at the end of the day, but as he won the Blues Brothers alleycat the day before and finished fourth at Glencoe that morning, he had good reason not to take me up on it...not that I really wanted to.

Actually, the highlight of the day was that my family finally came out to see me race, and they got to meet the team, watch some tricks, check out the chifg scene, and learn how to evade masked strangers that want to shake your hand. One thing I found particularly funny: my kids were starving, but we couldn't go eat dinner until the sprints were done, so every time I won a heat, they were totally disappointed: "Not again!" Gotta love your fans.