It’s Thursday, which means heading up through the park. Used to be the case that the lower gate would be open half the time, closed the rest, but lately, it’s nearly always been closed. Today, as usual, closed. The upper gate, on the other hand, has only been closed once or twice previously. As you can see in the right-side photo above, the park guy had just managed to get it opened up as we arrived. Good timing, since, at my speed, I would have been heading uphill so fast that I might not have even noticed it wasn’t opened, and likely vaporized both the gate and myself from the force of impact. Not.

Young Kevin, Mark P, Marcus, Eric, Todd, JR & Jan this morning, a cooler morning than we’ve seen in some time, cool enough that long-fingered gloves were once again required. Windy too! Wasn’t it just a week or so ago that we were in the upper 80s? Definitely looking forward to the return of warmer weather. But as slow as I felt, we still got back by 9:22, right on schedule.

You know you’re getting old when you know your body so well that you really don’t have to question what something means. In this case, it was my heart rate, which I just couldn’t get over 154 or so climbing up Kings this morning. Normally I’d be in the mid-160s when pushing it, but nothing doing, my heart just wasn’t responding in a manner that corresponded with effort. It was simply hitting a brick wall at 154 (and I wasn’t going any faster than 154 would indicate either). For most people, this would indicate over-training, a symptom that says you need to back off a bit because your body’s rebelling. For me, that’s an impossibility because I only get to ride three times/week (other than my short commute).

From past experience, I know that a non-responsive heart rate often occurs the day before I come down with something. And guess what? Tonight I’m downing cold-eze, hoping to keep an obvious oncoming cold from getting worse. What’s the deal here? I’ve read nowhere else of evidence that a heart that won’t kick into gear is a leading indicator of getting sick, and yet for me, it’s happened time and time again. Is it just so strange that nobody has given it any thought? I know that, if not for the attention I pay to my heart rate (just one of those things I do, not something that anything good really comes of, just more information to process that might somehow make riding a bike seem more important), I never would have noticed it.

So as you can imagine, I was bringing up the rear of a moderate-sized group that included the two Kevins (and this time, the younger Kevin is doing pretty well after having had his kidney stent removed yesterday), Karl, Karen, Mark P (whom we haven’t seen in some time), Marcus, George, Todd… and me, way off the back. Just under 29 minutes to the top, but once there, I was able to play with the big dogs for the most part, because there isn’t that much of the ride that requires a high heart rate. Except the upper part of West Old LaHonda, and yeah, I pulled up the rear again.

The funny thing about it is that I’ll feel better riding when I actually feel sick, because I have something tangible to fight against. Much better than just riding slow for apparently no good reason.

Last night Kevin, Becky and I were riding home from the shop after work, and I noticed it was 7:33pm when we left, exactly 12 hours prior to when Kevin and I leave for the Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride. And, sure enough, I check the Garmin and we left at 7:33am. We made better time than normal getting to the start though, since we spotted Andrew from the RC shop just ahead of us, and Kevin of course had to run him down.

Marcus, Kevin, George, Jan, Chris(? a friend of Karl’s who works with him at REI), the other Kevin, Todd… who else? Ah, Ludo joined is for a bit, first time out for him in many months. Brandon had gotten an earlier start and was riding as fast as he could, ahead of us, trying to not get caught until late in the ride. What he didn’t know was that we were riding at a civilized pace (again), and held up a bit first when I waited up for Kevin (son, not the pilot) who wanted to shed his leg warmers at the park entrance up Kings, and then later for George when he tossed his chain.

Kevin (son, not the pilot) had wanted to get in some extra miles by dropping down to LaHonda and heading back up West Alpine, but found no takers today. I couldn’t go with him because it would add over an hour to the ride and not get me back in time for work. Darn, would have been nice! As it was we ran about 11 minutes late at the finish, never really getting into that “fast” groove this morning.

It was Tuesday that George got on my case about some of my Strava ride descriptions, basically focusing on the pain and challenges, making it not sound like fun. And that hit me, because my job, seriously, is to make cycling seem like something people want to do, not have to. So today I set out to “have fun” even though it was a Thursday, which meant the tougher route to Skyline, up through the park. It worked! It’s not as if I was very fast heading up the hill (I wasn’t), but that didn’t matter. I was out on a bike, riding with friends, and looking for the little things that make each ride over roads I’ve ridden hundreds of times, a bit different.

Hard to put my finger on why this morning’s ride seemed a lot more fun than most, and more the way I remember from the past. Pretty big group, as you can see in the photo. Weather? Not like a few days ago, so dressed up in leg warmers and light base layers, but not bad either. My only concern was that I’d forgotten to use my asthma inhaler before the ride but it really didn’t seem to make much difference. Yes, I sounded a bit worse, kind of a wheezy sound at the bottom of each breath, but I felt pretty good.

The group stayed together on the climb up Kings, with the exception of Kevin J, who’d had to take a brief stop for relief near Huddart, and I rode a bit behind the main group so I could keep an eye on him and make sure he was doing OK. We came across Brandon, who’d left a few minutes earlier than us, just past the park; he had intentions of trying to hold our pace for a while, but that’s tough to do when you’re carrying a backpack with work clothes on a bike that’s a good deal heavier than the rest of us were riding.

Everyone stayed together the rest of the ride, at a good but not deadly pace. The sort of thing that I could really get used to. And I can especially get used to completely dry roads on descents! No worries about sliding on tar stripes, nor holding back impatient cars behind. Life is good on days like today. There will be many more.

First ride for Kevin in two weeks; maybe, just maybe, he’s turning the corner on the pain from his latest kidney procedure. Of course despite my warnings that he should take it easy he had to try and ride with Marcus up Kings and, what do you know, ends up with something like a pulled muscle in the groin area sort of thing. We ended up not doing the West Old LaHonda loop, shortening the ride by about 6 miles, but the good news is that he can ride and went through the day without the continuous pain that’s been his partner for a while. This is good!

Sometimes it really doesn’t matter how fast you are, as long as you’re faster than the other guy. That was the case this morning when, on the climb up Kings via Huddart, we came upon and passed the group from ShopX. Never mind that they’d probably already ridden hard this morning, while we were just starting out. All that matters is that we left ShopX (and their former owner, Les) in the dust. Sort of. We did dispatch with Les and the guy he was riding with, while two others who were up ahead a bit pulled off to the side, obviously totally intimidated by us, but I’m sure their story is that they were waiting for Les. Yes, that would have been my story too.

We made it to the upper park entrance in about 9:40 which, for me, is pretty good. I was trying to stay in the saddle no-matter-what and doing a pretty good job of it. Why? To work on different leg muscles and try to get smoother videos. I managed to stay in the mix, as we rode yet again at a fairly civil pace. Who was with us today? Kevin (pilot), Karl, Karen, Eric, Joe (first timer, on his new Trek Domane!), Jan, Todd, Marcus & Mark. New-guy Joe did very very well, and I suspect he’s only going to be getting faster because he’s not only new, but also fairly young. Hate that!

A small bit of excitement on west-side Old LaHonda when, rounding a bend, Jan found himself coming face-to-bumper with a large truck. Fortunately everyone was going pretty slowly so Jan had plenty of time to get out of the way.

Overall a pretty tough ride, despite Strava giving a “suffer” score of just 91. Maybe Strava downplayed the toughness to make it seem like we were just coasting past as we went by ShopX?

What a beautiful morning, nearly warm enough, but not quite, to dispense with leg warmers. That’s coming soon, but it’s safe to say we’re now in prime-time riding weather. As mild as our winters are, I don’t look forward to November-March due to colder temps and wetter roads.

Large group this morning; I think just about everyone was there but my son, who will hopefully be back up and running for Thursday’s ride. Even Andrew from our shop came out to play, with his work clothes carried in a backpack (and he still danced away from me on the climbs). And Millo, where’s he been hiding? We knew he’d been riding with the older slower guys who leave about the time we get back, but he shows up today and he’s flying across Skyline! Training secretly is the only thing I can figure.

Towards the end of the ride, just after turning off Tripp onto Kings, Karl took off, getting quite a lead on us until for some reason I decide to chase him down. Nobody else came with me, not at first anyway, but eventually Kevin (pilot) rides up to assist with the chase, but it was too late, no way could I make a second go at getting back to his wheel. My victory was bridging up to it in the first place.

It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it. We have a customer in our Los Altos store who recently added a Domane 6.9 to his stable, a gorgeous bike with full DuraAce 11-speed Di2 electric shifting and carbon wheels. He was having issues with not enough braking power and some noise from the front, and, since he rides a 60cm, as do I, my brother thought it made sense to have me try it on the Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride and see what’s up. The braking issue was simple; the brake pads were set so close to the wheel that you couldn’t generate much power (the stopping force is much greater as the lever pulls in further towards the handlebar). Loosened up the cables a bit and voila, brakes back up to full power! Noticed a little squeaking, which was later taken care of by tweaking the pad angle just a bit.

Regarding the bike in general, wow, what a difference in normal setup between my Madone 6.9 H1 and the new Domane. Way shorter top tube on the Domane, and way higher. I compensated as much as I could by installing a slightly-longer stem, inverting it (so it’s as low as it can get) and “slamming” it (just one thin spacer underneath, all the rest on top) and it was still a good 2 or 3 cm higher than I’m used to, and nearly 2cm shorter. What effect does that have? Plenty. I’m sure, given a bit of time, I could get used to it, and in fact, later in the ride, it wasn’t so bad. But until then, it at least gave me the best excuse in a long time for climbing really slowly. You don’t realize how much difference it can make; when you’re used to bars a certain height and move them higher, climbing, particularly when standing, feels markedly different. Overall, making the move from a Madone H1 to a Domane is going to require bumping down one size for the frame and probably adding 3cm (!) to the stem. Good news for someone who feels too stretched out most of the time. It was an excellent exercise and helped me to spot a fit issue today with someone picking up a new bike (Domane 5.2) really fast. Should have done this long ago!

As for the ride, we saw the return of Mark E., along with the usual suspects, Todd, Karl, Karen, Kevin, Jan, and, at the very end, we came across Pilot Kevin returning from a different ride. “Serious” training apparently. Guess I’ll have to look at his Strava account to see what he’s up to! As I mentioned it was a pretty leisurely ride up the hill for me, losing sight of the last person ahead around the half-way point. Got to admit it’s times like those that you’re really looking forward to “topping out” on Skyline, the main part of the climbing behind you, and looking forward to the beautiful views of the coast.

One thing different was that, with the higher handlebars, I found myself in the drops (lower part of the bars) for a while heading down west 84. The others must have thought they were hallucinating, as I’m almost always on the top part of the bar, even descending.