Should I stay or should I go now?

04:00

In the red colour that you see on control panels in bad cold war era submarine movies, this is what my Swedish designer brushed stainless steel alarm clock said to me this morning…

4 mother F AM.

Sure, the alarm was set for 4.50am, but 4am feels like a whole other world. Its at this point that my mind starts its internal struggle:

Should I stay or should I go now?

To stay feels so good… To go will hopefully ultimately feel good, but what if you’re so tired that you ride like a turd on wheels? And so, this is how the fight starts. Like a highway, the mind starts to process all the pros and cons in a steady line of matrix like code, back and forth like a tennis game on speed:

Pros – Get some more KMs in for the Strava challenge… Want to test the set up tweaks we made last night… love riding my bike… There will be no traffic at this time… We will feel good afterwards…

Now, we look for an excuse – Cue checking the rain radar. Its clear… Like totally clear. Fuck.

Cons – I am really tired now… bad sleep… we did a big interval session this week… What if something happens to the bike and we have to travel today… Am I over training? This bed feels so MF comfortable… Its mental to get up at this time innit?

Ultimately this morning, the PRO’s won… The mere hint of rain would have been a victory for sleep ins, but as I gagged on my banana before heading out the door (I hate bananas but have to respect their super food capabilities and sweet low cost), I thought that it would be good to get out so early.

And it was… I have lost count of how many mornings I have got up at this time in the last 2 years, but it is worth it (until you burn out and have to spend time in bed vomiting after rides because you have ridden yourself into the ground, see case study of me this time a year ago), but in Singapore its the best way to get an extended and relatively stress free ride in.

Not much else to report really, here is the oddest thing I have seen for a while… They don’t call it monkey road for nothing I guess:

“Ah, should we be doing this on the road?”… “Get your stinking paws ON me you damn dirty ape”

And a get together with the boyz last night to talk about bikes and the incompatibility of training plans:

“This week I only want to ride between 263w and 268w”

So where is the ZING in this post? Well, I am in short supply here unfortunately, but they are not in Whistler, where Crankworx is going OFF right now and life looks awesome. So, if you are going to watch one video today, then click below to see this awesome video of the Enduro round in Whistler (both for the views and awesome riding), the 67,000 other people that watched this can’t be wrong:

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Enduro-World-Series-Round-4-video-2013.html

If you like photos, then scope this epic link out, lots of shots of Garbanzo, which you may remember from Dirty Nomad’s own visit there in July:

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Crankworx-Whistler-Garbanzo-DH.html

Tonight I am off again… I will keep the destination a surprise, but as a hint I will be needing my $500 Rapha jacket (actually, I am taking two of them…), so stay tuned for some chilly action… Mean while, another little taste of the creative coming out of the Dirty Niseko design lab:

Get your T Shirt orders in now…