All posts by Mike

Ride cut short as Kevin’s legs were MIA

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

I though I was the one who’d be in trouble today, due to a really painful left calf that decided to spasm painfully last night and today could hardly be walked on. But fortunately cycling is not at all like walking so, while I was aware of the pain, I could push through it without making it worse.

Kevin, on the other hand, seemed to leave his legs at home. He was doing great until about halfway up Old LaHonda, and then just fell apart. The planned ride to Pescadero wasn’t going to happen. Nor a direct run to the coast and then back Tunitas. The only thing Kevin was up for was his favorite climb, West Alpine.

Favorite or not, it was pretty slow. Just under an hour and I think Kevin’s best-ever is just under 40 minutes. But maybe it’s not so bad that my last Sunday ride as a 55-64 year old isn’t too impressive, leaving more room for improvement next week when I bump up in age to the 65+ group!

Ohmygosh it was cold! Again! And snow! And wine!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

First snow ride of the year, and an interesting find at the Skegg’s Point parking lot.
Tuesday’s ride was wet can cold. Glad we chose the rain bikes. Today’s ride (ok, yesterday’s by now) was wet and COLDER!!!

At no point did the temp ever leave the 30s (the Garmin says otherwise, since it started out in a warm garage and didn’t reflect the real temperature for about 20 minutes). And, like Tuesday, it got colder as we climbed. About halfway up Kevin (former pilot) meets up with us; it was actually surprising we saw at least two others out on the road. Who’d want to be out there when wet and cold like that? We saw our first patches of snow at the archery range corner on Kings, and then more up top near Skeggs.

We stopped at the Skeggs parking lot to put on rain jackets and came across an unopened small bottle of wine sitting on one of the picnic tables. First time for everything!

Descending Skyline and then 84 was not a lot of fun; my hands were probably turning all sorts of odd colors inside my gloves and we couldn’t wait to get back down onto the flats and warm up. But, it didn’t get much warmer; about 37. Up to a balmy 39 by the time we got home.

Not fun in the shower as the fingers thawed out. Hate that feeling. There’s just nothing you can do about it; you have to thaw out, but for 3 or 4 minutes the process of thawing out is worse, much worse, than the feeling they’re frozen. Hopefully, the last really cold ride of the season. And thankfully, no ice.