one door closes, another one opens

Jaysus what a weekend. The basics:

Masters' Track State Champs. I was targeting the kilo, but not enough to actually try out different gear inches or get some quality advice. I spun out and got second place. arg. Normally I wouldn't be too upset about not winning, but the field was thin and I had lots more in the tank. So I went into the 3k pursuit with a little fire in my belly, but no pacing strategy. Somehow I pulled a 3:59, about a half second up on Chuck Judy. I was convinced he had it in the bag. I would have thought the officials would've grouped us a little more on account of the small field, but hey, 40-44 was almost the same field that 40-49 would have been. Good thing they didn't go totally by the rulebook, or the day would have possibly been rounded to 30+ and Jeff Whiteman would have won everything. It seemed like the big boys stayed home to rest for Nats, and somehow "Masters' 40-44 3k State Champ" just doesn't exactly blow your hair back, but I'll take it.

Meanwhile back in Gotham city, Ella got 2nd in the Chicago Triathlon, out of 152 in her division! Woot! Nearly last out of the water (they really ought to call the kids' ChiTri swim "water-jogging"). 3rd after a killer T1, then grabbed one spot in the run. The winner was even in sight, but with a little too much ground to make up.

Lang did his first 'real' soccer games, and man, trial by fire: 4 games in two days, in the heat, and up against some psycho suburban teams. He got a hefty plaque. I'm proud of him. He was working hard and having fun, and just givin' er. Soccer gets so little ink in this family, and he had a couple of great moves, a header or two, a couple reverses. Awesome.

Relay cross: I was slated to partner with Jannette, but after her crash, I got a shot at racing with Ella for the first time. She was a little spooked by the triple-bend/harbor drop/couch madness, but started to shine mid-first lap. The whirlpool taught her how to lean into the turns more than I'd been able to. We somehow finished 35th of 50, but more importantly, I had the best time ever at a cross race, and that's saying something. She was slightly shell shocked for a while, but she's definitely down for doing more cross. Hup! Hup!

Mom was domestique to the stars. Gotta go serve her up a vacation.

at least somebody in the family's getting a podium finish this summer

Ella competed in the South Shore Tri-Masters Triathlon this past weekend. It's a fun one. Totally relaxed, with an emphasis on introducing urban kids to the sport, so the high strung "stage parents" aren't as prevalent.

This was Ella's fifth triathlon. One of my favorite parts of watching them is that, after the first couple events, you're completely out of the picture. Soccer, you're there, and you try not to be a lunatic on the sideline (some don't bother trying), but at halftime you sneak over and give her some tips. Swimming...less so, but you're there, and you can still follow up after the fact. With a triathlon, you really have to let go, and it can be tough. It doesn't escape me that this is a metaphor big enough to beat you over the head with: I've done my job, I have to let go, I can't hold her hand or talk her through it, and I can't keep the haters from trying to bring her down.

I've seen little shits (always boys) looking back over their shoulders, trying to block anyone from passing them, threatening to cause a pileup of bikes. I suspect she enjoys being out of sight for the same reasons, an escape from the threat of instruction. I'm not the most experienced triathlete, but what can you do? You look at the map, you talk through the whole thing, thinking about it, visualizing it, and you help her get her crap to the transition area. Then you go to the beach and dance.

There's always music, an emcee, a bunch of nervous kids, and depending on the venue, a healthy cadre of ubercoach parents. Somewhere along the way, I told her it's a rule you have to dance before the start. It works, though she usually stomps on my feet or flings sand at me instead.

They're off and she's in the front row of 30 girls. She's out of the water 9th, slips through to nip a spot in the run to T1, then about 6th to begin the bike. Only a handful of girls have proper road bikes, and these are her only real competition: 905 is out first on the bike by a long way. 931, her teammate, is a spot or two back, but she's crying and looking around for somebody. She doesn't find them but it doesn't stop her from motoring away on the bike. Another road biker, a couple of bmx-ers (one of them is HUGE, she looks 12!) then Ella. I call out "three road bikes ahead of you!" and my coaching job is done.

She finishes up the bike in almost the same place. She's a long way back from third, so I figure she's out of the medals. The run is only a 1/4 mile, and I didn't think she could make up the ground. Even worse, the amazon girl on the bmx bike should be long gone, but she's right behind Ella! Ella's not exactly lightning in any one discipline, and this girl could pass her in three strides. I see them start the run, and it looks like my worries are unfounded. Ella starts to turn over rapid little rabbit steps, and bmx girl takes giant slow bounds, getting slower already. Off they go.

We wait in the final 50 meters and 905 comes in way ahead of any other girls. 931 has put her tears behind her, and is still in second. Is it possible that Ella ran her way into a medal? She comes in, still kicking hard, and just ahead of her is a boy half a head taller than her. He's looking back and pinning her into the boards; he won't let her pass. She slips through, he counters, they're bumping elbows 10 meters from the finish. She surges through again, and...he can't hang on! He fades and she pushes on through the line. I may not be able to see the whole thing, but I love the parts that I do get to see.

We weren't sure how she did, but sure enough, they called her up for a medal: female 7-10 years old overall (and she's only 9.) She was beside herself, but at the same time, on the way home: "I'm gonna win it next year."

Stay tuned. I promise we'll have a camera by then.

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:

hero of the day: Ironfred

Frustrated by finding the Hawaii Ironman crowd "too serious," Cory Foulk decided to make a statement, that is, you don't need ten grand to do the race. How did he prove it? By riding a 61 pound single speed beach cruiser, barefoot, with ten pounds of Jolly Ranchers on board.

I don't know what's funnier, the fact that he called in race reports to a local radio station from pay phones (wiki that, kids, if you've never seen one), or that he bombed through the downhills with his feet on the handlebars, with other racers trying to draft him. (Not only is that illegal, but wouldn't you be just a little embarrassed by the fact that you let such a ride get ahead of you?)

Read TFA at the floridasports.com.