Kevin’s still not able to ride, but has finally left a message with his primary care physician that he needs a referral to the ortho doc. I even set up a spare battery for his e-bike so he could ride at “Turbo” setting the whole way. Hopefully he’ll be on the mend soon. Needs to, especially in the off-hand chance that France will actually let in Americans in September.
Rode pretty good up Old LaHonda, Strava says 22:47. I rode a really strong middle section but faded in the final mile. Hate that. Met up with a good customer out on West Old LaHonda (you’ve probably seen her if you ride much; tall woman on a white w/red Trek road bike, with virtually no skin exposed due to sun issues. Fairly stiff headwind out to the coast but seemed like I was ok with it, looking at wattage numbers that seemed decent enough. Stage Road at 6:43 was best time in just over a year! 15 seconds faster and it would have been in my top 10.
Tunitas. Ah, Tunitas. I was feeling good on the flat section. A bit too good. Hit the Bike Hut right at 3 minutes, which is the target if you want to enter the forest right at 10. Still lots of ways to screw up the next 7 minutes, but I didn’t. Until. Until I rode passed a coiled up snake on the road. Darn. Had to turn around and see if it was OK. The snake was right where a car would drive over it. It looked like an “ok” snake (not a rattler) but if they’re not really big, you can’t be quite so sure what you’re looking at (on the tail). This guy was strange. No sticks around, so I nudged him with my wheel to see if he was alive. He was! I found a dried up vine and tried to prod him off the road and he did the darndest thing. He rolled over on his back. ???!!! Never seen this before. Eventually I got him to move off the road and off I go. About 6 minutes lost, so obviously any idea of a really great time was shot.
Still, you gotta do what you gotta do. Without Kevin holding me back, I could ride until I couldn’t. I started thinking about just one thing. The “Hammer of Thor” section. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was my best in a year. And I managed to keep on going instead of just phoning it in on the flatter part on the top. Nothing like Kevin can do when he’s motivated; he DRILLS that section. In the end, 54:20, which wasn’t bad when you subtract the stop for the snake. I’m going to double-check but it might have actually been more than 6 minutes. But not 12. 12 would have made it a spectacular effort.
Lots of people out climbing Kings as I descended. Nice day. Guess that’s what it’s like this time of year here in the SF Bay Area. I wouldn’t know; this is when Kevin and I are usually in France.
