It’s crunch time; I leave for France early Sunday, a different trip than those past since I won’t be going with my son (Kevin), but I won’t be going alone either. This time I’ll be meeting up with a friend from the way way way wayback days, Larry, that I used to race with back in the early-mid 70s. Technically not race “with” as he was on a rival team, although the two of us did do a 600 mile bike tour of Northern California back then too.
The big question was whether I’d be in shape for this trip, due to the issues my expired-warranty 61-year-old body has forced upon me. There had been a pretty steady decline in my cycling performance for about a year and a half, and the medication I’m taking for my body’s desire to manufacture too many blood platelets isn’t in the performance-enhancing category. The opposite, actually.
And yet the past two months I’ve been showing steady improvement and am now riding strong than I have since September 2015. Fastest times up Kings the “normal” way (not through the park) on Tuesday, and through the park Thursday, in even longer than that. In fact, yesterday’s time through the park was faster than a week ago, even though I forgot to use my asthma inhaler!
I’m not sure what’s going on, but for the moment, I’ll have more, please. There may be a logical explanation; I have to drink a *lot* more water due to the medication, and it’s possible that I’ve been a bit dehydrated the past few years due to the breathing issues (very tough to drink when you’re breathing very heavily, so when climbing, I’ve tended not to drink much at all, but now I’m forcing myself to… and it might be a very good thing for my cycling).
Overall, I feel like I’m ready. We’ll find out in a few days!
