Have you ever had one of those days?

Well Chris did today. We had our regular Saturday brick scheduled for an 11:00am start and Justin had arrived at my place and we were getting our nutrition and fluids ready to go. We were expecting Chris to show up at any minute and we'd get going on our ride. In addition to riding Chris was planning on joining us on our run which in the past wasn't part of his training regimen but having finished his racing season he decided to come along. So at 5 minutes to 11 my phone rings and it's Chris. Earlier in the week he'd built up his P2 frame with several spare components and had taken the pedals off his P3 and put them onto the P2 cranks. This morning he was moving them back onto the P3 for our ride but was having difficulty getting them onto the cranks. I told him that Justin and I were just about ready and that we'd ride over to his place to see what was up. Justin and I finished up, got on our bikes and headed over to Chris'. When we got there Chris had pulled the cranks off of both the P2 and P3 and had installed his older FSA SLK cranks that had previously been on the P2 onto the P3. His thinking being that the pedals were just on these cranks so he shouldn't have any problems getting them back on. Well he was still struggling with the pedals so while he was working on one side on the bike I grabbed the other pedal and tried to install it on the opposite side. It would not go on ...... and then I noticed that I had the left pedal and was trying to install it onto the right side crank arm. In his hurry to get the pedals swapped from the P2 to the P3 Chris must not have noticed he had the pedals backwards. So I switched pedals with Chris and the pedal started to screw onto the crank arm. But before continuing I suggested that Chris pull the SLK cranks and re-install the original cranks onto the P3. While he proceeded to pull the SLK's off I installed both pedals onto the other crank arms in preparation to install them onto the P3. Well Chris is unscrewing the crank bolt ..... and it's turning ..... and its's turning ..... and it's turning ..... but the cracks aren't coming off. I suggest he try to tighten it but same thing, the bolt just kept turning. We figure the threads are stripped and start thinking so now what? We can't remove them, we can't tighten them. And Chris says "hack saw". There's just enough space between the arm and the bottom bracket to get a hack saw blade in there and cut the arm off of the spindle. Out comes the hack saw and Chris starts sawing ...... and snaps the blade. More blades come out and he starts again. I take a turn, then Chris, then me, then Chris and finally "pop" the arm falls off. As Justin commented right after that "I can't believe what I just watched". And yes it was a first for me too and probably a last but at that point, with the threads stripped, there was no other way those cranks were coming off. Ok, we installed the original cranks and headed off for our ride. About 3 km into the ride Chris and I lose Jusint. We've turned a corner and he's nowhere in sight. We wait a couple of minutes then think he's had a mechanical so we turn around and head back a bit but see him coming down the road. He'd tossed a bottle and had to turn back to retrieve it. Off we went again heading up York Durham this time past Bloomington to Aurora Rd which Chris had ridden before but Justin and I hadn't. About 1 km after turning onto Aurora Rd. Chris, who was in the lead, started waving us down to stop. He pulled off the shoulder and looked at us and said "flat". You got to be kidding. He pulled the back wheel off, removed the tire and replaced the tube in no time. A shot of CO2 and we were ready to go again. Chris buddy, what did you do to anger the bike gods? Well thankfully the rest of the ride went off without a hitch and we made it back totaling just under 70 km and it was a good thing we ended up doing a shorter ride today because who knows what other surprises could have been in store for us. Chris, Justin and I arrange to meet up at the Petro Canada at 16th and 9th to start our run. I've drawn up a training plan for Justin that I hope will get his run ready for Miami and it involves consecutively longer runs off the bike over the next 5 weekends. Today's was to be 11 km and I planned a route starting east to the bypass, around the bypass and west across Bur Oak winding down to 16th Ave., out to Markham Rd. and back home along 16th. Justin wanted to maintain about a 6:00 minute pace but Chris and I picked up the pace initially to about 5:45, then to about 5:30 and by the end of the run to below 5:00. I told Chris I wanted Justin to push himself during these bricks hoping that when he saw he could do the runs at a better pace than what he'd set out to he'd gain more confidence. We knew he couldn't keep up with us but that wasn't the idea. We wanted to act like the mechanical bunny at a greyhound race except we had Kona running with us so that doesn't really make sense. Afterall the bunny never chases the dog. At the end of the run, with the exception of probably eating a clif bar too late in the ride and feeling it during the run, Justin felt much better than the 2 previous bricks we'd done and we're thinking the nutrition plan is developing well and will be bang on when Miami rolls around. And here's hoping we don't have one of those days at the race.