The past few weeks have been all about rides where I didn’t feel all that great; in a nutshell, the unfortunate truth is that each ride after I turned 65 had been a bit of a downer. Sunday’s 72 mile ride in 3 parts (Kevin’s “vaccine” ride to Leandro & back via Palomares) went well, but does a long ride with just over 2000 feet of climbing really count?

Heading home from work last night I got a great view of the heavy marine layer, aka fog, crawling over Skyline. And thinking, will my bike ever be clean again? Fortunately the ride began a bit warmer than other recent rides, mid-40s, and the fog, which we could see at the start, burned off by the time we got to the top. Karen joined us today and I kept up with her as Kevin dropped behind. I finally pulled off and waited for Kevin at the wide-open clearing section of Kings, partly because it’s convenient, partly because it’s also about 20 minutes up the hill so you get a good testing of your functional threshold power. Not great, not terrible, at 247 watts. Better than the mid-230s I’ve been seeing recently, and I definitely felt like I could have kept going. Who knows, maybe an under 30 minute time if I had. Kevin claimed it was his bloody nose that was slowing him down (it’s true; he did have a bloody nose that he had to stuff part of a paper napkin into to stop).

Up top we actually saw shadows and the road was dry! Temp was 41 or 42, so not too bad. Heading west to Old LaHonda it started dropping though, ending up at 37 on the lower section of West Old LaHonda, where the picture above was taken. Didn’t feel that bad though.

Overall, a very nice day on a bike. But, I’m really looking forward to it getting warmer again!