There’s no question I’m gradually improving, getting past that wet winter where I didn’t stop riding, but my climbing speeds dropped precipitously. For the longest time (a few months) it seemed that a sub-30 time up Kings was beyond reach, then last week I finally cracked that “barrier”, and today I snagged a 28-something. OK, Strava says it was 28:59 but that’s a whole lot better than 29-something, right? And 1104 meters climbing/hour too! Both are cutting it about as close to relevant metrics as you can get.

JR, Kevin (pilot), Marcus, George… no younger Kevin today, as he’d had some kidney pain issues again that sent him to the ER this morning. All tests negative; seems like his body is simply into manufacturing pain these days. Even though he skipped today, I’m sure he’ll still leave me in the dust Thursday morning. Hate that. But without younger Kevin, the group’s testosterone was limited by age (Marcus being the youngster, at 45, nearly twice Kevin’s age) and they nicely paced me up the hill. Not sure if that was their intent, but the speed was pretty much perfect.

The only thing slightly unpleasant this morning was the number of cars up on Skyline, especially the section from West Old LaHonda to 84, and then a lot more heading down 84 and into Woodside. Many large dump trucks too. Is there some major construction going on up there?