#snakealley Slip'N'Slide

Every road racer knows how to check the weather report. Admit it, 99% of those signing up for a race at the very last minute are watching the weather report as the final decision points for the go/no-go. When the pre-race registration closed earlier this week the weather report looked pretty decent. Cooler temperatures with partly cloudy skies seemed pretty typical for Mermorial Day weekend.

Fast forward to the morning of the race - that weather report not only looked worse, I at first thought I was headed to a cross race. Mid-50s and almost constant rain in the forecast and I was ready to put on my mudders and claim my stand in the pits for bike swaps. I didn't have to muck to the pits, but I did have to think about tire pressure - something you rarely expect in crits. With the cobbles up the snake tire pressure had some impact - if you slipped, you walked. Suddenly I wasn't 'over-prepared' by bringing my battery powered CX pump with super-accurate gauge.

Snake Alley is one of the larger junior races in the Midwest, if not the country. Spencer, Kenz, and Nickzilla all met kids from other parts of the country last year. The boys 15-18 field in particular is a large and very competitive race - with over 50 kids registered to race. The kids have a huge interest in doing well. Having the skies open up prior to the race put some of them at ease - with a good CX background your mindset doesn't shift when a little rain comes to the game.

The focus of the race is on the snake, and the steep, cobbled turns. While many kids would slip, fall, and walk the snake, the descent was far more important. Traditional road hazards play havoc on this day - manhole covers, road paint, potholes filled with water. These traditional hazards could send someone sliding down the descent on the seat of their pants at speeds that impact recovery time.

Names familiar to the OVCX cyclocross scene dotted the front of the Juniors 15-18. The race selected 8 racers at the top of the field, 3 of those were 15-16s and those there were Haley, McShane, Petrov. Not only are our local juniors kicking our adult butts in OVCX, they are kicking butts at big events in the road scene.

#Juniors Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama Travel Day

Nothing warms the heart and cements the value of cycling in a teenager more than missing a day of school to race. Over the last few years I have certainly pushed my wonderful wife to the brink several times with the question, "Sure.  They can miss a few days of school.  Right?"

Teenager's have very few reservations about missing a day of school - but sitting in a car for 8 hours may push those limits. How do you make the car fun while driving through the flat, barren prairies of western Illinois and the rolling farmland that borders the Mississippi River in Iowa? You don't.

Old guys like myself remember traversing western Indiana into Illinois to visit relatives near Peoria, IL. If you have ever driven Interstate 74 you would swear there are no turns and that you can see the Rocky Mountains off in the distance. A couple of us have the experience of driving across Nebraska, so Iowa seems like driving the strip in Vegas by comparison, but the kids get the luxury of flying long distances while the dad's share a bed in the back of an SUV.

As you read this blog post on your iThing with your head down at the dinner table avoiding your vegetables, the realization should come to you that iThings are what make this all bearable - for both the teen and the parent. As long as 3G is strong enough the teen won't know what country they are in and couldn't care less if they are in Indiana, Illinois, or Iowa. They all start with "I" and look the same through the car window. Of course I am writing this blog entry on an iPad with cell service while sitting the passenger seat of a Toyota Sequoia midway through Illinois.

Signs that you travel with another family too often include not being able to remember which road trip you saw something peculiar. Several times someone would say "remember last year when we saw [insert silly memory]" which would quickly be rebutted with "no, that was on that other trip". We are going to have to start documeting these encounters better. Maybe in a blog or something.

Travel days do give you time to consider things you hadn't really thought about previously. We found ourselves wondering about our lazy eyed llama - did she have a name? We affectionately called her "llama", but that doesn't seem real personal. We decided that from now on we would call her Sue. Seems appropriate, though we aren't quite sure why.

Return of the Juniors, Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama

To them January seems like an eon ago.  For adults involved in junior cycling, the time has passed quickly between Cyclocross Nationals and our upcoming Memorial Day trip to Snake Alley. When we last left our duo of Spencer and Mackenzie, they had  finished a successful cyclocross campaign with a trip to Madison, WI. Now it's May and it's hot.  Packing the trailer, it's out with the propane heater and in with an extra ice chest.

After a short but needed post-cyclocross break, Spencer and Mackenzie got back to riding, this time with a full road schedule in mind: more miles, more hours and a return of intervals.  On tap for the summer are road trips to the Snake Alley criterium, back to Madison, WI for Junior Road Nats, and on to Rimouski, Quebec for a junior stage race in Canada. This meant a TON of riding. A TON of racing. Many adults find riding relaxing and rejuvenating, but making 10-12 hours of riding per week not feel like eye-rolling annoying work to a teen with a very important social media life is like a Grand Tour in itself.  So, we come up with ways to make the training fun.

For those familiar with the Cincinnati riding scene, there is a llama farm northeast of town along a road frequented by cyclists. Mackenzie, under heavy influence from her giddy female Biowheels teammates, stopped and talked to the llamas. Imagine their excitement when they realized one of the llama's had a lazy eye.  Sometimes the joys of cycling are found off the bike.

It became Lazy Eyed Llama ride.  While we've ridden past the farm multiple times this spring, we rarely get up close to the llama. Sometimes he's in the distance grazing comfortably on the farm.  Sometimes, he's out of sight leaving us to question his whereabouts and what the farmer may have done with him.  Regardless, the llama makes the miles and hours pass quicker.  Suddenly, the summer road race trip is here and cyclocross season is "sooo last year Dad."  Mission completed.

Over the coming days, we welcome you to follow Spencer and Mackenzie on their tour of junior road racing.  Since this is their trip, the kids decided the llama must have a place in the upcoming blog entries.  To honor the llama's place in their training, welcome to The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama.

To kick off the 2013 travel season on Memorial Day weekend in the Quad Cities, we are hereby titling these entries "The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama". Heck, if it makes the kids giggle and feel better kooked up in a car for hours with a sea of corn out the window, then by all means we'll do it.  Stay tuned.

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