Another cold morning, although not even close to record-breaking territory; never got below 37 I think? Coldest-ride ever saw a temp of 23 many, many years ago. I was a different person then; if I encountered temps like that now, even my electrically-heated gloves wouldn’t be able to keep my fingers from freezing in place.

Just me and Kevin, and no more than 4 others we saw during the entire ride. For a brief (very brief) period of time, I was thinking I might feel pretty good on the climb, as I was able to climb Jefferson with relative ease. An unusual thing, that! But getting caught behind the garbage truck in reverse set the tone for things to come. It was a pretty slow and deliberate ride, even though it did warm up quite a bit as we climbed.

Cars were being a bit nuts this morning; it was like a driver’s ed film on steroids. People coming out of driveways or merging from one road to another without paying any attention Tuesday, it was deer all over the place. Not sure which is worse.

Turning from 84 onto West Old LaHond one has to be very careful of cars, but the surprise today was a bike coming around the corner! Somebody feeling a lot better than us; he passed us pretty quickly and we were never really able to get close to him after that.
<div class=”strava-embed-placeholder” data-embed-type=”activity” data-embed-id=”8131590167″></div><script src=”https://strava-embeds.com/embed.js”></script>

There really wasn’t any good reason to expect I’d be feeling better this morning. It was darned cold last night taking out the garbage, and I knew it was going to be even colder in the morning. I had a good idea that Kevin wouldn’t be at the top of his game, since he’d bailed on Tuesday’s rain ride, but when Karen showed up, well, that can get him moving. But, not today.

I felt OK getting over Jefferson to the start, and I almost felt OK on the steep section through the park. Almost. I thought I’d made it, that I wasn’t going to get that grinding-to-a-halt feeling, that by the time I crested the steep part I might be able to just keep going. Nope. My breathing went crazy, like it usually does at that point, and the lead I held over Karen and Kevin quicky evaporated. As usual. But this time, I didn’t fall off the back; I was able to grind my way back up to them so, by the time we reached Kings, I was feeling OK.

As you can see in the video, Skyline was quite beautiful, with the fog highlighting the sun’s rays through the trees. Nice to see a picture here that doesn’t come from West Old LaHonda too!

After a whole lot of rides that seemed to be either ever-slower or just treading water, it was great to feel like I was, well, back on the bike again.