debut redux

It was a weekend of seconds for the Neurohr racers. Ella put one race in the tank back in March, a cold windy day that probably scared her off from any spring classics in this part of the country. She returned to the tarmac for Monsters of Midway, and I finally got to experience race day without pinning my own number. For me, the highlight was slow rolling my fixed gear around the course with her, "blasting" music out of my phone. Her choice for warmup music: "Party Train" by the Gap Band. Wise young grasshopper.

Well, it was a race for some of them. 20 deep from ages 10-18, 2 girls total, so she was flying solo about 10 meters into it. Her chain was skipping/nearly dropping and rather than pull off, she kept rolling by and yelling how many times she'd had to shift back on. "Eleven times! . . . Thirteen!" At some point I told her to quit shifting altogether and my wife told her to pull over or zip it (or something like that). Then her little brother got things sorted by yelling "PLOOPY!" as she rolled by, which put a quizzical look on her face, but we never heard a word about dropped chains (until the end, the total: 29). If you're wondering, it's a reference from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and yeah, though it doesn't really mean anything...it's probably not good.

All in all, it was a good outing: she got away from the 40 rpm cadence she seems to like, and kept the pedals turning hard for a solid 30 minutes. There's not much more to it at that age, though she's clearly figured out how to yell at the team mechanic mid-race.

Sunday I was up for Fox River Grove, a taste of Snake Alley without the bricks or the long drive. I've been meaning to dip my toe in the waters of a new age group for the first time this year, and since team support isn't too critical in this type of race, I decided to hit the 40+ race to see how I stack up. Answer: not too well. Although, as a teammate pointed out, I was racing against guys with hyperbaric chambers and national titles. Then again, they probably have plenty of actual "hill repeats" in their plan as opposed to a couple of "high resistance intervals" in mine. I had a couple of well-placed flurries to score some separation from the, uh, short list of guys that finished behind me, but mostly I was riding solo.

Frankly it was a little dull, like a time trial instead of a race for about half the laps. I had some fun pacing the lead group, lapping me on the climb...for a good 20 seconds, and a bit better luck with the chase group, maybe for 40 seconds, but other than that, kind of a snoozer. I couple people had me at 14th, but officially I was 16th/22. Meh, though I scored a new PR in 1 minute wattage: 494.

Ah, data, the silver lining to the cloud of a rough race.