Sometimes I wonder why I would want to get up earlier than I have to so I can go climb a hill on legs that often protest “Why me?” right from the start. I’m reminded of pro cycling extraordinaire Jens Voight, who, when asked how he keeps going when he’s tired, tell his legs to “Shut up!” His legs seem to listen better than mine. Still, cycling is easy compared to running, where every step connects to the pavement and requires force to push forward. No way to “coast”, downhills as painful as uphill (or even worse if you’re clumsy on your feet like me), and if you ease off the pace for a bit to rest, it’s obvious, while on your bike, you still look like you’re going places.
I bring this up because our Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride often has company, in the form of the young woman seen in the photo. She’s not quite as reliable as we are (nobody is!) and varies her route at times, and has sometimes even been known to take a vacation somewhere. But we see her out there on a regular basis, pounding the pavement, mile after mile. We say hi as we ride past, and sometimes exchange the briefest of conversation, but we don’t know much about her, except that she obviously likes to run, perhaps as much as we like to ride. It just seems like such hard work though. Why would someone run when they could ride? We’ll have to ask her sometime.
Meanwhile, we had Karl, Marcus, Nigel & Mike this morning. Neither Kevin; the pilot may have had to work, and my son claimed that he had to take care of something at school that required that his sister drive him. We rode up through the park (I could have vetoed it, but why not suffer just a bit more than usual?) at an easier pace than Tuesday and had a pleasant run across Skyline and Old LaHonda. I wore leg warmers thinking the fog might have cooled things down a bit, but the lowest temp I saw was 57 (briefly) so I might have been just a bit over-dressed.
Most-improved rider award goes to Nigel. He hung up there with Marcus yesterday, and today he was hanging out with Mike when Mike was pushing the pace on west-side Old LaHonda.
