The US Postal (Mechanics) triathlon team

Today Geoff, Chris and I finished the remaining 6 race bikes. Julien and Juan had to follow one of our riders who arrived early. Most of our riders will arrive Tuesday but this one decided to arrive today. So Julien was to follow him and since Julien needed company Juan went also. No big deal. Building 6 bikes between three mechanics was no big deal. We were done by about noon.
Normally the first thing I do after checking into my hotel room is wash the team truck. After that I hook up power and water so I can start working. I arrived Thursday but it was dark when I arrived. Since I have a rule against working when it is dark (late), I opted to wash it in the morning since it is not an easy task. I could probably wash three normal cars in the same time it takes to wash the truck. Friday we did inventory and prepared the wheels we’ll need for camp. Saturday we did 2/3 of the race bikes. Today we did the remainder of the race bikes. We decided to leave building the (US) spare bikes until tomorrow. Since we finished about noon, I finally decided to wash the truck. It was getting to me. Having a dirty truck AND working on bikes instead. So, finally it got done. A whopping 64 hours after normal. Normal is about an hour after arriving at the hotel. I feel so relieved having a clean truck.
I like to ride my bike. I try to ride a lot when I’m home but when I’m on the road with the team, it is nearly impossible. There is always some work that can be done. It is hard to ever get ahead of the game. Most of the time, I’m comfortable but never completely done. So, I pretty much write off doing any riding while traveling with the team. More often than not there is a small (sometimes large) fitness room at the hotels we are at. So Friday I ran on the treadmill for 25 minutes. Saturday, I rode the stationary bike for about 45 minutes. Today I decided to run again. I got a whopping 35 minutes in. I hardly EVER run. It is hard to get motivated to run. Plus it is hard to go easy. Pedaling my bike slowly is easy to do and I can chat with my friends. Chatting and running is next to impossible for me. I’m so close to redline most of the time. So the run was a hard but needed task.
As I walked into the room Geoff was on the stationary bike. He was working up a good sweat. Geoff and I were almost done when Chris walked in to the fitness room. He had gone for a swim in the pool. So, between the three of us we could have made a US Postal (mechanics) triathlon team.