It had been a pretty sleepless night, maybe 3.5 hours or so, and as I’m tossing and turning and noticing the clock says 3am, beginning to wonder if it’s going to make sense to try and ride. But that’s not really an option, and at worst, I consider it training for my trip to France just over a month away, where minimal sleep can sometimes be the norm.

Interestingly, when I got Kevin up at 6:55am, he gave me that “Dad, no way, I can’t ride, I feel terrible because I didn’t get much sleep” routine. And for some reason I gave in, decided not to try and drag him out there, something which he later admits to being a mistake.

Glad I rode anyway; I find that getting out on a ride, with very little sleep, somehow seems to recalibrate and energize me so that I can survive the rest of the day. That and I would have otherwise missed the beautiful views up on Skyline and elsewhere, as we’re in yet another “transitional” day between cooler & slightly-damp weather and the high temps that are supposed to kick in tomorrow. My only frustration would come later on, after downloading the ride and discovering I was just two seconds off my best time between the lower and upper gates at Huddart Park on the way up. Hate that!

It really doesn’t add up, especially when you include the car crash we came upon that I didn’t even mention in the title. It’s almost June, not the time of year you’re thinking about it being a bit cold and damp. This is when you shouldn’t have to be looking for leg warmers and base layers!

So what? If you’re determined to have a great ride, you will. Coming off Sunday’s successful 112 miler to Santa Cruz, I was determined! Determined enough that I pulled off a 27:32 up Kings, fastest time in a very long while, and an indication that maybe I won’t blow up on the big climbs in France this year. Even passed up my son near the top, who was feeling the effects of Sunday’s ride in a bad way, the opposite of the feelings I was experiencing. I proved on Sunday that, if I wanted to push down hard on the pedals and go, I could. Confidence. Something I haven’t had a lot of for a while.

We did have a small amount of drama heading down the west side of 84, coming across the scene of two cars that had collided in a corner. No flares out yet, so we’re coming fast around a corner and then bam, hard on the brakes as we came across 4 or 5 cars stopped.

We intelligently moved forward a few cars, preferring not to be last in line in case a car comes flying down the hill and can’t quite stop in time. Better to have a few cars to provide a barrier for us!

Then JR nailed the infamous pothole on Skyline, the one about half a mile south of Sky Londa, same one I hit on Sunday but with better results. Classic pinch flat for JR today. Overall, we arrived back at the start about 12 minutes past schedule. Not that I would keep track of such things.

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.