Pretty cool watching Jens go up against the hour record, and win! 43 years old and he’s still got it. What does he have? I think what sets him apart is a different way of looking at pain. To Jens, pain is feedback that tells him it’s game-on.

The day didn’t start out quite so pleasantly though; the weather forecast rain between 7am & 10am, right when we ride, so Wednesday night Kevin and I had to see if our “rain bikes” were in shape to be ridden (they hadn’t seen duty in… 6 months maybe?). Good enough. They’re just not much fun to ride, after being spoiled by the new bikes each of us have (his new Madone 7, my new Emonda SLR). When we got up Thursday morning and looked outside, the ground was dry! That was 7am. Thought maybe we’d miss the rain. Nope. It started coming down at 7:05.

Nobody but us on the ride, probably because it was going to get pretty nice right after we get back, so why ride in the rain? Maybe a good thing because we weren’t feeling too lively, taking about 36 minutes to get up Kings, after which we immediately turned around so we could get to the shop in time to watch the live streaming video of Jens’ amazing ride.

Most-interesting thing on the ride was coming across some deer in the meadow off Manuella, looking a bit apprehensive. Found out why a few seconds later, as we spotted a pretty well-groomed & fed coyote walking across the field.