It’s been a long time since I wasn’t the last, or close to, on the climb up Kings. Wednesday night, riding home up Jefferson, I was looking at my power meter and seeing numbers that were just plain sad, under 200 watts at one point, and thinking… what if that was the case heading up Kings just over 12 hours from then? How can it be that I ride home from work, just kind of going through the motions, and somehow expect the next morning to wake up at 6:50am, and by 7:32am be putting out 230-260 watts “cold” (no warm up), trying to stay on Kevin’s wheel as we head to the start of the ride?

It’s one of those things best not to think about; it just works out somehow. Your body gets into the routine and does what it’s used to. Heading home from work is different; in general I’m trying to avoid riding so hard that I’d need to take a shower before dinner, so again, it’s what your body is used to.

This morning it was Kevin, Kevin & Karen on the through-the-park Thursday version. Surprisingly, I felt much stronger than expected, with my legs, finally, feeling like they wanted to climb. The lungs still sucked (or didn’t suck air, I should say), so I was able to climb pretty hard, limited only by the length of time it would take before my breathing routine fell apart. That lasted pretty much the entire ride, but most importantly, it got me to the top of Kings ahead of the other three, something that hasn’t happened in a while.

After a long series of rides where it feels like you’re just going through the motions, it’s really nice to have a strong day. Strong, of course, is relative, but it brings with it hope for the future.

Time to play some catch up! It’s been… I don’t even want to look and see how long since my last post. And the idea that today, getting an almost-33 time up Kings (would have been 32-something if ex-pilot hadn’t slowed up at the end), is something to talk about… that’s sad. But at least it was a beautiful day, much warmer than anything in a very long time. Lately my times up Kings have been in the 34-36 minute range, a far cry from back in the day when my goal was, no matter how sick or bad I was feeling, it would be under 30. I still know “how” to climb, just can’t do it very fast.

I thought maybe there’d be some sense of age being an excuse, but the truth is, at 66, there are a lot of other people out there, my age, who are quite a bit faster. I used to assume I’d have an advantage on longer rides, but not so sure about that either. Sunday Kevin’s knee was bothering him so our ride to the coast was truncated pretty badly; a whopping 39 miles, just up Old LaHonda, down the other side, then back up to Skyline and north to 92, then return via Canada. The Sunday prior (yes, it’s been a while!) we did the usual Pescadero/Tunitas loop, and it felt, well, not-so-bad.

If you had asked me 25 years ago, when I was 41, if I thought I’d still be doing this ride at 66, what would I have said? My first thought is that I’d be saying no, I’d be cutting the mileage back a bit, or maybe alternating days on the flats/foothill. But probably not. More likely I would have said I’d keep doing this same ride for as long as I could. And if I compare today to “back then” I’d be thinking about 26 minute times up the hill vs.. well, I still think I can do a 30 later this year… and these days we get back to the start at about 9:29 vs 9:19 back then. What’s 9 minutes really?