A bit of catching up to do; this is the week where it became a make-or-break situation for Kevin and the upcoming trip to France, after the car tossed him off the road a few weeks ago.
We considered him trying to ride Thursday morning, but decided to wait another day, just to make sure his hands were OK. So we re-wrote the plan, and did an easy Portola Valley loop Friday morning, then Saturday, 4th of July, a day when we’d normally do something epic, we instead did a torturously-slow ride up Old LaHonda and… that’s about it. We had hoped to do a bit more but Kevin wasn’t feeling up to it. But, that laid the groundwork for today’s ride, the first “real” ride since the accident. And of course that would have to be a run to the coast, up Old LaHonda, over Haskins to Pescadero, Stage to Tunitas and return.
We modified the “usual” ride just a bit, opting for the coast rather than Stage Road. Kinda getting tired of that choppy pavement! Smoother, but not nearly as nice due to heavier traffic. On the other hand, as you can see in the photo, it was a beautiful day out there!
The plan was to take it easy up Old LaHonda so Kevin would have something left later in the ride, but that didn’t work out; Kevin motored up Old LaHonda at near-normal speed (which leaves me gasping for breath). That was very encouraging, except that I had concern, later validated, that he wasn’t in shape for such an effort… that he was burning more matches than he had. The climb up Tunitas was almost as slow as the climb the prior day up Old LaHonda! Kevin pretty much died, taking just over an hour to cover a distance that he’d normally do in about 48 minutes. But… he did it.
His hands felt fine after the ride, so he’s definitely mending. Self-inflicted pain is fine (the sort of pain you get from riding really hard). This ride was all about legs that hurt, and trying to get back in shape for the trip to France.
