Well today I went on a bike ride with the Almaden Cycle Touring Club. As you can see, they are a pretty substantial operation. They have about 1/2 dozen rides to choose from on any given day so you can pretty much pick the level of effort you want to make.

The ride I picked was only about 44 miles but it kicked my @$$!! (Click on the image for a much larger view.) There were two climbs, Alpine Road and Old La Honda Road. (Alpine is the spur you see at the bottom of the map and OLH is the squiggle going up to Skyline Blvd right after the spur.) Neither of them were major by Colorado standards, although OLH is quite steep. Both are beautiful, very shady, although different. Alpine follows a creek (and for that reason it's pretty moderate) and is full of lush vegetation. OLH goes up through redwood forest and that is pretty impressive. Both are only one lane wide but there's rarely a car. OLH is absolute jammed with bikes though. It's sort of a benchmark around here and everyones talks about their "OLH time". The fastest time ever recorded on it was just over 14 minutes by none other than Eric Heiden (remember him?)! For the record, my time was 32 minutes, which was the second fastest in our group of six. Not bad for such an old fart, especially since I was trying not to go all-out because I didn't know when it would end.

By the time I got back to the apt I was draggin'. Luckily there's a pool here, and that fixed me right up. Although my knees hurt.

How am I going to make it through that century in Boulder 2 weeks from now?