We had both Kevins to keep me honest this morning, pilot & son. Also Eric and… that was it! Karl & Karen are at the World Cyclocross Championships in Louisville, George doesn’t ride with us on Thursdays, Todd was getting over a cold Tuesday that might have still been a concern today (Todd’s sensible like that. For the record, I’m not.)

Normally we’d ride through Huddart Park on Thursdays, but this morning I wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate, which had been running higher than normal on Tuesday, so I was determined to see if I could keep it at 160 on the climbs. Almost; it crept up to 162 a few times, but by forcing myself to relax I kept it in a fairly normal range. Of course, that also gave me an excuse for not trying to keep up with the two Kevins, who ditched Eric and I about a third of the way up the hill.

That system check thing? Confirmed my worst fears. An excellent dinner the prior night, eating too much of something called Casole (I’m sure I slaughtered the spelling), with chocolate cake for desert, well, let’s just say my rear wheel had plenty of ballast to keep from spinning. The scale showed 2 pounds higher than Tuesday. Adding insult to injury, Strava says my “suffer score” was only 95, on a scale where anything under 100 is wimpy. Hey, I may not have been going really fast, but I was certainly suffering! Maybe now I know why some don’t ride with computers & heart monitors.