Over the weekend two of our regulars had traveled to Austin and come back with something more than an appreciation of Texas music and beer. Karen Brems won the Cyclocross National Championship in the 50-54 division, and George Smith took 2nd in the geezer, I mean 59-64 age group. Very impressive! Both showed up on our ride this morning; that’s Karen far right, George far left.

We also saw the return of Nigel from Great Britain (he’ll correct me if I’m supposed to say “UK” or something else that would demonstrate how little Americans understand our friends in Europe). And Karl, who dropped off the map for a bit. And Joe H, who moved to Colorado. Plus the usual Kevin, Kevin & Eric. 9 in all, I think, just about all of the regulars and semi-regulars except maybe Marcus.

Pretty much the same old story heading up the hill; I could hang with the fast guys up to the park entrance, and then drift off the back and watch them ride away. Kevin, Kevin, Nigel & George rode at a pretty good clip until Nigel blew up before the wide open section. Joe had dropped back and was riding with me, picking up what was left of Nigel and then rounded a corner to find Kevin on the ground, having a seizure. Guess you could say his engine seized up from the effort. He claims he was hanging up there just find, which would have given him about a 26 minute time (looking at his Strava data, he was stopped for about 2 minutes, 50 seconds, and when he resumed his way up the hill, he wasn’t going particularly fast, ending up at 30:50).

I blame Kevin’s seizure on his new-found love of lower gears for climbing. He was averaging 74 rpm on the lower flanks of Kings; mine was 63. Kevin (Pilot) isn’t recording rpms, probably because he doesn’t have a cadence transmitter hooked up, but could also be because the computer thinks single-digit rpms are erroneous and tossed out.