All posts by Mike

Worth the effort. Always!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

There might be that occasional morning where you wonder, why am I climbing this hill? What could be fun about this? Should I change my routine?

But the top of Skyline, the gateway to “the other side”, is just 30 minutes away. It might be a tough ride getting up there, but it’s always worth it. Just check out what it was like this morning! How could it not be worth it? Think what you’d have missed if you slept in or stayed down in the foothills?

Kevin, Kevin & Karen with me on the ride today. Older Kevin & Karen rode on ahead on Kings while younger Kevin actually stayed with me all the way to the top. Not sure if being a nice guy is just a phase or permanent; I suspect the former! It wasn’t a really fast run up through the park today, but it was still faster than most so far this year (3rd fastest out of 18 times). All cylinders seemed to be firing just fine. Average power was a bit low at 199 watts (should be around 205-210) but that’s probably because I was content to take it easy on the downhill run to West Old LaHonda instead of pushing it at the front. A few minutes of doing maybe 60 watts instead of 240 can really drag the average down!

Mike went Mountain Biking???!!!

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The scene from Skyline near Saratoga Gap, picture taken by Lee C, who really should be in this photo too since the ride was partly his idea.
Memorial Day was a bit different from the norm; typically, Kevin and I have done back-to-back fairly decent road rides. Well, we got the first part down (Sunday’s usual to Pescadero) but yesterday we did something different. Meeting up with a good customer (Lee C) we explored the area between Saratoga Gap and maybe 5 miles to the north. A series of single track and fire roads running along the sides of Skyline, offering great views and a lot of fun.

Not super-technical stuff (good thing, since that would’ve have put me in the dirt!) but fun. 14 miles, nearly all dirt, 1871 feet of elevation gain. No suffer score since I was recording on my iPhone app (left computer at home).