Time to play some catch up! It’s been… I don’t even want to look and see how long since my last post. And the idea that today, getting an almost-33 time up Kings (would have been 32-something if ex-pilot hadn’t slowed up at the end), is something to talk about… that’s sad. But at least it was a beautiful day, much warmer than anything in a very long time. Lately my times up Kings have been in the 34-36 minute range, a far cry from back in the day when my goal was, no matter how sick or bad I was feeling, it would be under 30. I still know “how” to climb, just can’t do it very fast.
I thought maybe there’d be some sense of age being an excuse, but the truth is, at 66, there are a lot of other people out there, my age, who are quite a bit faster. I used to assume I’d have an advantage on longer rides, but not so sure about that either. Sunday Kevin’s knee was bothering him so our ride to the coast was truncated pretty badly; a whopping 39 miles, just up Old LaHonda, down the other side, then back up to Skyline and north to 92, then return via Canada. The Sunday prior (yes, it’s been a while!) we did the usual Pescadero/Tunitas loop, and it felt, well, not-so-bad.
If you had asked me 25 years ago, when I was 41, if I thought I’d still be doing this ride at 66, what would I have said? My first thought is that I’d be saying no, I’d be cutting the mileage back a bit, or maybe alternating days on the flats/foothill. But probably not. More likely I would have said I’d keep doing this same ride for as long as I could. And if I compare today to “back then” I’d be thinking about 26 minute times up the hill vs.. well, I still think I can do a 30 later this year… and these days we get back to the start at about 9:29 vs 9:19 back then. What’s 9 minutes really?