All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. I had that moment.

Karen in the lead, followed by JR & Kevin, as we head towards West Old LaHonda on the ride that Strava says didn’t happen.
Of all the rides for my Garmin to decide to eat, this morning was a really REALLY bad one to pick. I feel like it didn’t even happen, because it’s not on Strava. I know I climbed Kings in 29:04 timed manually, and I was hoping that Strava would put it at 28-something. I know that I was FLYING on the descent from Bear Creek to 84, and thought I had a chance at a PR, but no, that moment too is gone. No Strava, no proof. I have a feeling that my average weighted power was higher than it’s been in a very long time, but no way to know for sure.

This morning it was Kevin (kid, but at 25, is I guess he’s a “kid” compared to 62-year-old “Pilot” Kevin, but I think, at 25, he’s even past that awkward “young adult” label), Karen, JR and, for a short time, Alex. Alex isn’t a high-speed climber type, and of course, neither am I these days. The difference is that he’s sensible enough to not pretend otherwise; he escorted us to the beginning of the climb and let the rest of us do the suffering thing. Kevin got to the top first, a 26-something time, while Karen stayed just out ahead of me, in sight but not reachable. My goal was to keep it under 30 minutes, if possible, after having been disappointed last Tuesday by a slower ride than expected. I was watching the timing points closely and it was looking good; by the archery range, it was looking barely possible I could get a 28-something. Unfortunately I was losing it in the steeper sections and I didn’t have quite enough fight left in me to really nail the final stretch to the top, but I did try. Not that it matters, since I have no records. No heart rate. No 20 minute FTP (functional threshold power) score.

I did spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to recover the damaged file, but it simply wasn’t showing up, either as a corrupted or deleted file. It’s just not there. The damage happened when it tried to auto-upload to Strava when I arrived home.

Darn. It was even such a nice day that we didn’t need leg warmers or base layers. About time ‘cuz, after all, it is July. But, in the end, it never happened.






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