when the morning comes

I woke up this morning singing this song in my head, at 4:15am:


When the morning comes...

So what happened this weekend? When the morning came the girls loaded up in the new Minivan, picked up a handful of friends and one extra parent and headed up to Six Flags (MORE FUN) for the day. Me? I sent them off, dressed up in my grungiest clothes and took the transmission off. My brother came over with a monster floor jack for some more height and we went at it. Got it off in couple hours, most all of that time was spend messing with the drive shaft on the passenger side. Needed clearance to pull the flange out so the transmission would come out. No matter what it wasn't coming off it seemed. So, then we had the bright idea - lets pull the transmission off part way then we can get the flange enough space to pull out. Sure enough.

Pulled the motor mount hanger that bolts to the tranny off and then it tipped right out. not too bad. A light lighter than I was expecting. The clutch looks okay. Plenty of material left but the whole bell housing is full of brown powdery dust. The clutch is slipping and the dust is evidence of it. The grooves are actually thinner than I'd like and possibly increased surface area has lowered the clamping force causing the slippage. Or the pressure plate is getting weaker. Anyway it is getting replaced.

Once we got it all taken apart and tools picked up we had a celebratory Sea Hag IPA and headed to the farm for some landscaping. Stopped for lunch and went out and picked up some Pizza and I had a pint of Allagash Black. Oh man that was good. Went back to the farm and my brother and stanley went to work clearing out one of the garages and I somehow wound up taking a nap on the hammock. It was really nice. Great day.

No riding. No thoughts of riding on Saturday.

Girls finally got home around 11;30pm. I woke up nice and late sunday morning (around 6:00am) and rolled down stairs with lucy - fed her and let her out and then got kitted up for a ride.

Dr, Flats a lot had mentioned wanting to do something like 90 minutes, maybe 2 hours, so I packed one water bottle of sports drink and no food. Didn't eat anything before leaving. I did have a big cup of green tea and a bunch of water. And with the temps below 60 degrees I put on a sleeveless base layer under the short sleeve jersey.

Got up to the fourbucks in Wayland square and there's Nathan and Turdowski. Turdowski suggests I go get a coffee so I'll be talking the whole ride. Not only did i NOT bring food, or more than one water bottle, I haven't replenished my slurpee money in the seat bag. (slurpee money = michigan thing, i might explain it some other time, should be self explanatory but the story has specifics, and one specific 7-11). I mentioned, "no cash." and he hands me two one dollar bills, "go get a coffee."

I love that my friends are enablers. Working to get me back on the sauce.

Now the only problem is, what can you buy at a Fourbuxs for two dollars? Well not much. I went with an Iced Coffee. 12oz is on the board for $1.95. And the total rings up to $2.11. The cute young short blonde gal at the register wasn't sure what to do but the manager looking gal who was pouring my coffee said don't worry about it.

sitting out on the patio waiting for Dr. Flats. He rolls up and we chat for a few more minutes and then roll out.

Conversational for a while, catching up a bit. Then we turn north on Broadway and I pull into the lead across the narrow bridge. And they fall into a single line and we stop talking.

On a group ride when everyone stops talking w/in a few miles, that's never a good sign. I was well warmed up after my 23 minute sprint from home to the Fourbux, and pushed the pace coming into the State Line sprint on 152. Dr Flats took off about 500 meters before the line and I just rode tempo. Nathan and Turdowski elected to sit on my wheel and we let the Doc fly up the road uncontested.

And then we kept motoring.

Up to the TT course. Tremont or bust. Everytime Nathan went to the front he lifted the pace a bit. And for the first half of the ride it seemed he was sitting on my wheel. So when I'd pull off after a long hard pull i was at my limit trying to stay on Dr Flat's wheel for about 5-10 minutes.

We just kept pushing the pace (or so it felt to me) into the wind all the way out. Just before crossing over 24 there was a nice stretch, maybe a mile or two, of ground up asphalt. You know that cheese grater road? Yeah. Turdowski and Nathan (two 150 pounders) freaked. Me and Dr Flats (he's 200+ as well) thought otherwise. I just started drilling it over the "cobbles" bouncing and floating and flying over that shit. So much fun. Me and the doc came over 24 and turned right, and looked back and they weren't anywhere to be seen. so we turned around and waited, and they eventually came back complaining about buzzing and vibration. Big guys can motor over that cobble like rough surface pretty well.

We hit a long downhill run and Dr was up front just drilling it. I'm tucked into his wheel and a couple miles of gradual down hill (my distances are all messed up - i don't know for sure how long - but it was a good while and fun).

Me and my one waterbottle, no food and we're on a ride that will get me about 75 miles for the morning. Dr Flats at one point stuck a gel in my pocket. I pulled it out wondering what the flavor would be, and OMG it was RAZZ. I LOOOOVE that Cliff Bar Razz flavor. SOOO GOOD. Sucked it down and wow that was awesome.

I started dying a bit on the way back in. Lack of food, water or just being worn out, pick one or all, I was getting gapped off on the little rises. Oh well. These guys were nice enough to wait up a bit until we hit seekonk and started winding down.

A couple data points, one from Dr Flats-a-Lot (with power). But it doesn't include my jaunt up and down the bike path.

Turdowski split off with me and headed down the path. I offered to buy him some Ice Cream at the Dairy Bee for buying me the coffee, but we had to swing by the house. His data points are here (no power). Those more closely resemble my ride time. But Mark's pretty close to my weight so his power numbers are a decently similar, even with the equipment differences. You can see his state line sprint there at 1300 watts. Oh and Dr Flat's Comments over on FB made me chuckle, "Poor GeWilli, getting all beat up on...not. More than once we were pulling 400 watts with him in front. Don't listen to him, he just wants sympathy." See, I had no idea i was dragging him along and he's sitting in my draft making 400 watts. Stuff I don't need to know.

So heading to the path, make it to the house, i downed a Coconut water (my daughter thought it would be good in her lunch, tried it and couldn't finish it, so I've got a few left to burn through) and man it was awesome, i grabbed a twenty and we headed back up to the Dairy Bee for Ice Cream.

We get there, 11:08 (i checked) and they guy said they aren't open until 11:30, the soft serve machines aren't cooled down yet... BUT, if we wanted a shake or hard serve he'd be happy to set us up.

That ice cream was soooo good.

He headed north, i headed back home and got the rest of the sunday sorted out for the up coming week.

When the morning came around this morning, I tried to fall back asleep but that wasn't working and after a good while of laying awake I got up and laced up the shoes and grabbed lucy's leash and we went for a 15-20 minute trail run with about 5 minutes of a cool down walk afterwards.

I hit the trails because I couldn't stand the thought of plodding along the path again. One week of running on it (not even that - only a couple days) last week and it already isn't fun. But we hit the trails there by Skinny's CX course (and Joey B's too) and lucy and I ran around, did the loop and it felt awesome.

My hamstrings were on fire yesterday but my calves were fine. This morning the calves were no issue and the hamstrings started off sore but they felt much better after a few minutes and right now? not so bad.

The tandem and the mini freak size 170 mm cranks on it were a pain going up the hills but it wasn't so bad. It reminded me that the Paramount of mine had 170mm cranks on it when I bought it. My first big upgrade for that bike was going to 177.5mm Mavic cranks (1991 iirc) and I was amazed easy it was to go up hill. There was on hill in Gig Harbor that I tried with the short cranks that I literally had to turn around and go a different way. With the longer cranks the same hill wasn't a problem. But now i guess i'm stronger than I was then because I can haul this tandem up the grades with only 170s.

All over the place today, yeah. Oh well.

I'm going to try and stick with this plan that my coach "outlined." There is some significant debate as to the wisdom of running 4 days in a row. But then the 3 days not running isn't so bad. I just need to get out for another sunday 3 hour ride next week.

heck I suppose I should check for a few races too, see what is on the calendar. Going to miss D2R2, 24HOGG and probably Mt ATT. Going to skip Tokeneke too.

That leaves Fall River Seafood crit. I hope they run it opposite of last year with the shorter steeper hill as the uphill. Would make it more mentally competitive for me.

Also thinking about doing a day or two girls CX camp sometime between the 16th and 20th of August. My daughter has been bugging me about it, really wants to do it. VCB expressed more than just a passing interest in the idea way back in May or sometime. I don't know if there are any of my friends with 8-12 year old daughters that want to come down to RI for the day to get some girls together to play with barriers, dismounts, remounts, turns and what not. I've got a nice little course (afore-mentioned) and two sets of PVC barriers.

Okay time to order a few bits for the old rusty Passat so i can have a vehicle to drive when CX season gets here.

heddwch
G