All posts by Mike

An existential ride? Name that movie, based on the photo

After Sunday’s ride, which was a lot tougher than it should have been, I didn’t really know what to expect today. Didn’t sleep well last night, but my weight is coming back down after the two weeks in Greece though, a sign that my body is rejecting the notion of rest and getting back into the swing of things.

Karen joined Kevin (not ex-pilot) with me this morning, on a little bit colder, slightly-foggier day than seen for a while, and yet a pretty nice day at the same time. Also, for some reason, a quieter day than most. Not just fewer cars, but almost that eerie kind of quiet post-9/11 where you noticed the lack of background noise from the missing planes for a week or two.

Today it was Kevin’s turn to suffer. Not sure why. I was ok, nothing to write home about, but able to get in some pretty hard 20-30 second efforts, pulling ahead a bit and then waiting for Kevin to catch back up. Karen was riding a steady pace and finished well ahead of us; on Skyline we suggested (and she agreed) to go on ahead.

The temperature varied from 47 to 52 or so, but even with the occasional fog, it didn’t seem that cold.

And that photo? It’s from West Old LaHonda (of course) where they’re doing a bit more than minor patchwork in a number of places.

It’s time to get back to work… in everything

It was nice being in Greece for two weeks (OK, cut out 2 long travel days from that). Got back Wednesday afternoon, rode the regular ride Thursday morning with ex-pilot (Kevin) while the other Kevin had literally flown the coup to a wedding in Denver. It was slow, really slow, but surprisingly, not ugly. Heart rate was up higher than normal, but that’s to be expected with two weeks off the bike. Even more so with a pretty hefty weight gain, leaving for Greece at maybe 161 pounds, returning at… 170???!!! Some of that was water retention from the flight; I dropped down to 166 after Thursday’s ride. Beautiful morning too.

Friday night I woke up maybe 2am and had this very odd question of… where was I? Was I in bed on the cruise ship, the hotel in Greece, or home? I figured it out and went back to sleep. 🙂

And then today. Sunday. No lingering effects of jet lag by now, and I was hoping Kevin (not ex-pilot), who was back from the wedding, and also hadn’t ridden while I was gone, would want to do the regular Pescadero/Tunitas loop. No way; he didn’t think he could handle the mileage. Good thing he thought that and we chose West Alpine instead, because I felt terrible going up Old LaHonda, and things only got worse on West Alpine. It was not pretty. We stopped halfway up to take off our leg warmers (got up to 78 on the climb), and felt a bit better, but still, it was a hard slog. Kevin was doing better, but up on Skyline things reversed and I was recovering and he was beginning to feel it.

Long story short- don’t spend two weeks off the bike.