The Tubes World Tour

This weekend was all run and no ride for me. Why? The weather outside was certainly acceptable, at least on Sunday. No, that's not the reason. For Saturday, I can plead busy-ness (business?), as after a quick 5 mile morning run in the cold, it was off to PVD to get KL on a plane to New Mexico. After that, I headed up to Harris Cyclery to pick up a replacement fork for the Yo Eddy. Sure, I wasted a little time checking out the numerous single speed mongrels they had on the showroom floor, but really I just had no time to ride. By the time I got back to the homefront, it was getting dark and cold again.

Sunday morning the long run was on tap. Packing a twenty oz bottle of Gatorade in the supply belt, off I went on a loop of a new design. After eight miles I tried to hook into Borderland for some trail mileage, but the mix of snowpack in the shade and muck in the sun chased me back to the road, where I completed my 15.5 mile jaunt in 2:05, an 8:05ish overall pace. My weight dropped about six elbows during this little adventure, and I was devastated. Last week after the 10 mile race at a much harder pace, I felt about 1000 times better. Maybe it was the back to back runs, or maybe that egg and cheese sandwich with mega salt did the trick last week, but regardless I was toast and there would be no post run ride.

Later at night I gave some thought to a spin on the trainer bike, but it had a flat! Doohhh! Too lazy to change it, that was that. This morning I was greeted by a resounding "thud" from out in the street, and I stirred from bed, peering out the window to find a late model Buick Lesabre nestled up against the telephone pole in front of the house. There was a thin coating of snow on the ground and apparently this guy found negotiating our arrow-straight street a bit too much in these conditions. I could see him moving in the car, so since it was cold and wet I simply summoned the local gendarmes and made myself some coffee.

Up early for a change, and with the snow and surely congestion-compromised travel conditions, I made an executive decision to move my telecommuting day to today. This left me enough time for a quick recovery spin on the trainer, perfect to sooth my run-beaten legs, but shit, the tire had not fixed itself and was still flat. You gotta do what you gotta do, so I pulled it off (huh-huh) and proceeded to patch the tube up. Coffee and glue, breakfast of champions. Now about this time, Material Meg is probably saying "Patch? What the hell is that?" I know Meg, if I were you I'd probably just summon a few of my loyal eunuch manslaves, dispatching them to the rain forests of Papua New Guinea to harvest some of the finest specimens of pre-pubescent rubber trees for conversion to All Natural-MegaDollar SuperLatex (tm), from which I could then have a herd of Sicilian peasants hand sew up a new back tire for my training bike. But this just ain't that kind of blog. Glue and patches it is, and a little dabble do yah.

Coffee in belly and tube back in the tire, I got in my thirty minutes spin and was happy with that. In other news, yeah, it's sad about Jan, he was entertaining, and despite what anyone says, he accomplished a lot. Since the so-called "authorities" can't do anything except raise doubt about their own competence, we'll probably never know who dopes and who doesn't. Maybe it's just because he doesn't speak English, but in the ammurrican press at least, Ullrich seemed to have more class than most. Thanks for reading.