Monthly Archives: June 2012

5 seconds = 1 minute? Ask Kevin. He understands.

Not too much to say about this morning’s ride beyond 25:04. No, that’s not my time (although there are days when it could be my time up Old LaHonda!). That was Kevin’s time today, up Kings. 25:04, verified by Todd, who was right behind him and clocked 25:05. I wasn’t around to see it; I arrive a good two and half minutes later. Right now I’m fine with 27-something. But Kevin? He now understand what it means to play the ride back in your head, looking for that 5 seconds you wasted somewhere along the way, 5 seconds that would have translated into a full minute in terms of respectability. Becaues 25:04? That’s a 25 minute time up Kings. 24-anything? That’s a 24 minute time.

Nothing else about the ride really mattered, at least not to Kevin. How fast can he get? I don’t know. He’s not going to get down to my 21:15 from the way-back days (and by that I mean when we still had oil-fired lamps in our homes and rotary phones… well, rotary phones anyway!). He’s not quite built for that, but pretty sure he can eventually get down to 23-something. Not bad considering his first time under 30 minutes was almost exactly a year ago.

One hot ride today! 65 very tough miles. 95 degrees.

90, 95 degrees, who's counting?

What better way to prepare for the heat we’re likely to encounter in France than riding up Page Mill Road when it’s 90-95 degrees? Making it especially tough is having Page Mill as the first hill of the day. That’s one mean way to start a ride. Page Mill is one of those hills it’s really tough to get a rhythm on; that bottom section starting just past the golf course/country club turnoff is just plain ugly, and it’s not until you get past Foothill Park that you can really get a handle on it. And that handle is pretty darned slippery, especially between park gates 3 & 4, where it’s gut-wrenchingly steep and you’re thinking why didn’t you go up Old LaHonda instead, an easier grade with lots of shade?

Adding insult to injury is Strava claiming I got a personal best on the climb, at 47 minutes. Umm… no. It wasn’t that long ago I did it in 44, and my son probably could have closed in on that time today too, except that he was being relatively-civil and stayed with me all the way up. OK, it seemed like it wasn’t that long ago, but since I loaded the last three years worth of data from my Garmin into Strava, maybe it was longer ago than I thought!

A beautiful day on West Alpine

We wasted no time heading down West Alpine for another date with Haskins Grade, a climb that Kevin claims to hate but is getting much better at, getting his own personal best today at 9:52 despite not climbing it for time. At least not until the last half mile or so when he noticed his time was pretty good and rode the rest hard. Funny how that works.

I’d like to say it was a fun run out to Pescadero, but not really; the stiff headwind and heat made it pretty tough. The upside? It’s rare that a cold Coke tastes as good as it did today!

Heading north on Stage we once again faced a headwind, yet did pretty good times up the two hills, primarily because motivation was provided by rabbits (cyclists ahead of us). Speaking of rabbits, I should have mentioned we had earlier seen a rabbit the size of a small deer as we rode Arastradero between Alpine and Page Mill. It was seriously huge!

The lower and middle sections of Page Mill proved to be Kevin’s undoing; we’d normally climb Tunitas in 45 minutes or so, but he was barely able to turn the pedals for a while. He can out-climb me dramatically on the first couple big hills of the day, but eventually he wears out and I keep on going. He did a miraculous recovery when the steep stuff ended though, charging the rest of the way at a pretty respectable pace.

In the end a tough ride with the unexpectedly-high temps causing a pretty significant weight loss (6.5 pounds for me) due to not drinking enough, even though I tried. Maybe I did drink enough and I burned 6.5 pounds of fat? Don’t I wish!