One of those days you can just barely hang onto that wheel in front of you

Kevin was on fire today; this is on Pescadero Road, where he set a new PR about 30 seconds faster than I've ridden that stretch in recent history. It was all his; I was in no shape to help at the front.
Kevin was on fire today; this is on Pescadero Road, where he set a new PR about 30 seconds faster than I’ve ridden that stretch in recent history. It was all his; I was in no shape to help at the front.
I had no illusions I was going to be riding fast today; in November and December I did enough traveling to lose a ton of base miles, and the day before yesterday I’d ridden up Mount Hamilton. Kevin wasn’t feeling well so he got to stay home and rest. Back in the day, that would have worked in my favor, but these days, yes, my legs are still feeling it a couple days later.

We left at 9:45am, giving the morning overcast a chance to burn off and enjoying much warmer temperatures than the last several rides. I think the low for the ride was a balmy 42 degrees! I told Kevin it was going to be a 26 minute time up Old LaHonda, knowing that usually I’m pretty conservative with my estimates and I’d beat it be a couple minutes, but not today. 26 was about all I had in the tank. That’s OK, this wasn’t supposed to be a fast ride. Apparently, Kevin didn’t get that memo though. Haskins was a moderate 11-something but the run-in from the Flamingo House to Pescadero? Kevin hammered. I mean really hammered, the type of pace where it was all I could do to hold his wheel.

Pescadero was the usual stop at the excellent bakery, although not having the traditional coke (due to my experiment with eliminating caffeine in exchange for lower blood pressure) really sucked. Kevin rubbed it in by having coffee. His second cup. He had another before we left the house.

Instead of the usual run up Tunitas we did 84 back from the coast, just to do something different. Well yes, it’s different, but it’s not better. That stretch from the coast to a mile or so past La Honda just isn’t a whole lot of fun, with its junk-climb rollers that sap your legs. And, of course, there was the issue of trying to hold Kevin’s wheel. How did he suddenly get so strong?

In the end it was a tougher-than-expected 60 miles, and probably our last dry ride for quite a while. The forecast for Tuesday looks messy!






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