I went out on the road today somewhat later than usual. 8 o'clock I think it was. I am usually earlier than that.
So the people were different.
You know what I mean. It is like if you go to a later spin class, the people are all different. To be expected.
So I met a guy. He was out walking his dog. But I know where he parked and I saw all of the stickers on his truck. They were all mountain biker brand stickers and athletic stuff. Might have been a 13.1 or a 26.2 on there.
He is an endurance athlete. I intuit that much.
I intercept him going up when I am going up. He is brisk walking. I am not much faster than that climbing. He has a funny looking dog.
We greet each other with a "good morning" or something like that.
I tell him right off the bat, "I bet that dog is faster than me."
He say "yeah, she is pretty quick."

I have become kind of a presence on that road and some of these guys are becoming kind of curious about me. This is a place of a pretty broad spectrum of athleticism. We have your dog walkers and we have trail runners that do several half marathons in a week.

But I have been thinking about this. How cool would it be if I found a compatriot that was similar in ability as me to ride with? What it be like if I had somebody could add an element of safety to my summertime endeavors on the Colorado Trail? That'd be cool. I wouldn't have to buy one of them emergency locator beacons.

So me an this guy are fishing around in each others brains about physical capacities. He ask me right off the bat how old I am. I tell him.

He fishes around for my trail type aptitudes. I tell him I don't do much of the single track around there because I mostly ride alone. (I don't want to wreck in the middle of a place by myself.)

I tell him that I am working on my ambition of 1 million feet of climb. I don't know if he figures that to be preposterous.

He asks me if I ride every day. I tell him no mostly every other day. I tell him my standard climb is 2,000 feet. I don't say do the math but I can see his gears churning. Quarter million per year, that could happen. Doesn't happen but it could happen.

But that guy says good bye with an "I'll be seeing you around here."

He is an athlete close to my age. Probably stronger. It'd be cool if I had a pal like that. I hope me and my hubris didn't blow it.

I saw a trail runner girl... now this is a later crowd, did I already say that?

I thought she was doing hill repeats like I do them. I figured out later though what she was doing was running 10k on the loop in one direction then at the end, instead of lapping, turning around and running the loop going the other way around. Heh, 2 x 10k without having the same vista each way.

But yeah, Sisyphus says life on the trail is way better than life on the couch.

Sisyphus also says he can eat way more than his exercise calories if he isn't paying attention.

Sisyphus also says his climb tally is at 699,400. Next ride, probably Friday, he will roll through the magic number of 700,000.