It was the best of times, it was the… well, you gotta be appreciative for what you have and not focus too much on the things that go wrong. Tuesday morning’s ride followed Monday evening’s knee assessment by Todd, basically confirming that he’s got Patellar Tendonitis, but a pretty mild case. Mild, unfortunately, does not mean without pain.

The plan was to tackle Kings at an easy pace, and at least on that score, we executed the plan. Just JR with us, so no undue pressure and he’d already had his killer rides in the days prior. Kevin was doing fine for the first half, and then he started feeling it. I think JR went into auto-pilot at some point, probably distracted by something and just rode off ahead without realizing it. That’s in the first photo.

The middle photo? One of Garmin’s new torture modes. For designated segments, it will display where you are in relation to others you follow on Strava. Tuesday morning it picked Tod F, good customer, someone we evidently need to sell a slower bike to! By the time we made it to the top, we were over 8 minutes behind Tod’s best time. Yikes.

The far-right photo? That’s Kevin doing the stretching exercises recommended by the other Todd (double-d Todd), his Physical Therapist. The stretching definitely helps, but doesn’t eliminate all pain. We cruised along Skyline OK, but doing the west-side Old LaHonda loop wasn’t in the cards. Fortunately JR picked up someone to ride the rest of the way with though, as Karl had come up 84 and ridden backwards to find us (presumably he must have left way too late to get to the start of the ride in time).

So that was Tuesday. Today it was just riding to & from the shop, which Kevin did without issue; hopefully tomorrow he’ll be back up to the full route. It still won’t be fast, but should be one more small step back to the full-speed Kevin. And, with just 6 days to go before leaving for France, there’s not much time to waste!