Saturday, February 16, 2008

Mission Accomplished...

The first attack of the day, and the only one I actually witnessed firsthand... Photo: Cornbread

101.25 miles / 7:35:00... I wanted to get a hundred in today, and the stars aligned and I was granted a free day to ride. I rolled out at 8am with the D-street crew, and we cruised west out A street, anticipating an increasing south, southwest wind over the course of the day.

The pecking order was quickly established, as those in the the mood to run 'em moved to the front, and I quickly exited stage rear. Cornbread tried to get me to chase back on with him (thanks buddy), but I was in a whole 'nother mindset. I didn't come to race -- in fact, I came close to not even coming to D street, knowing it was going to go down like that. But in the end, I knew I'd see a lot of good buddies, and the chance to even get to roll out of town with them was enough to get me over there.

As it ended up, I got into a great group that included Smitty, mw, S Hansen, dk, Fob and the dark night at different times. oh and Drake too... he was there. I rode with them until Crete basically, then they turned around, and i was alone. I followed the tracks of what I assumed to be coach, cornbread, perhaps schlake and maybe a couple of others... not sure who, but they turned off at the point that they must've gotten about 75-80 miles. Gravel roads are fun that way -- you can follow tracks.

But I kept going south to DeWitt, then south and east to just north of Beatrice. I finally turned it north and enjoyed the tailwind I'd worked so hard for up to that point... Overheating began almost immediately. It was sweet... I was shelled, but the wind was strong enough that I was still going 18-19mph up hills in the big ring.

I crossed over Hwy 77 at Princeton, and hit 25th street north to 14th street into Lincoln. It was a pretty clean route overall, no hiccups or real sketchy stuff. 75 of the miles were alone, which was good, because there was no shelter from the wind. I had to work.

Saw Coach running on the way back into town. Got a high five from him. Thanks brother...

Got to hang out with Laura tonight... had some Chinese for dinner, went to Barnes & Noble. Yep, life is good.

Hope it was a good Saturday for you too.

Cheers,
MG

8 comments:

Jason said...

Holy Hundie!! Nice work for freaking February! While you were riding 100 I was riding 120. 120 minutes that is. On my freaking trainer!! Grrrr.

cvo said...

nice job dude,

yeah, sometimes you just wana get spit out the back, and hope nobody notices you, turn on the tunes and solve some of the worlds problems in your mind....

keep them posts coming dude.

MG said...

thanks guys... it certainly wasn't the fastest i've ever ridden, but it's puttin' miles in the bank, and that was the goal. my "official" training plan for transiowa is to do a 100 miler in february, a 200 miler in march, then be ready for the 312 miler at the end of april. well, it's mid-february, and goal #1 is checked off. time to start working on #2...

oh, you'll love my "yes-tubes" vs. "no-tubes" experience yesterday. i've been running the La Cruz with the rear tire converted tubeless with my getto-tech system, and the front was running a slime tube. i'd had a failed conversion on the front a couple weeks ago and just decided to run a tube in it.

well, yesterday, i found out why i put up with the occasional hassle of setting my stuff up tubeless with my getto sealant... slime tubes don't work when you get a dozen punctures. getto tubeless does. at one point on yesterday's ride, as i approached the southern-most point of my ride, i went down a dirt road that ended up being a dead end road. as i turned around, i must've run over a goat head plant, because i picked up at least a dozen thorns in each of my front and rear tires.

my front tire (with the slime tube) was flat almost immediately. the rear tire bubbled white latex around a couple of the thorns, and out each of the holes as i plucked the thorns out of the rear tire. i spun it and it sealed immediately. i didn't even add additional air. it was fine.

so after pulling the thorns out of the front tire, i started pumping it up, figuring "hey, it's a slime tube, it'll seal the holes up, right?" wrong. i pumped. spun it. it flatted again. i pumped some more. spun it some more. flatted again. said "fuck it" and installed a different tube.

this morning, with a little extra patience, i successfully converted my front tire to tubeless. thank God. now i don't have to worry about flats on the road...

thanks again,
mg

redstone said...

Word. I think I got about 90 minutes on the cross bike today.

MG said...

Man, Davey... I'm long overdue on a call back to you. Monday it's comin', I promise.

Glad to hear you were at least able to get out and spin around. That's better than a lot of people I talked to this weekend, including our good buddy Jason above!!

Guitar Ted said...

Nice ridin' mg! Glad that you are able to enjoy clear roads and decent weather. Roll on, brutha!

sda said...

i got about 60 in on the road on sat. it was nice and relatively warm.

then 4.5 hours on the tele skis at RMNP yesterday. came home and built a compost bin. then stir fry veggies and tofu with some beers last night.

i'll second your life is good comment gb.

MG said...

Thanks Guitar Ted. I thought of you several times during the course of that ride, knowing you'd be smiling if you knew what I was doing right then...

And SDA, it sounds like you had a mighty fine weekend yourself. Man, I bet you were FLOGGED after 4.5 hours on the tele skis! You earned those brews!!!

Life is good indeed. I wanna' be able to ride bikes forever.