Poor Tired Ma, Tortured by Nim Yet Again

I did my traditional early season timed climb up Old La Honda Road this morning, and not too surprisingly, was rather slow. About 7 minutes off my normal in-shape time, to be precise. It put me squarely in what Stephan refers to as the "bowling league" of times, at noticeably over 30 minutes. Argh. My only consolation is that I was actually trying to avoid my normal habit of maximizing suffering on this hill -- i.e. some of the snail-like pace was on purpose.

So where's the torture? After warming up with a hot shower and eating lunch, I went to pick up Nimue, and she decided to be a speed demon, setting a new all-time record for the ride home from school. The diabolically fast creature averaged 9.9 mph over the whole ride home, on her own bike! I've seen bursts of speed from her at that rate, but never anything quite as extended as this. I was on my heavy mountain bike with heavy tired legs, still slightly hungry, doggedly trying to keep up despite my desire to ride at a gentle walking pace.

An amusing graph of her average riding speed over the last ~3 years, since I have way too much data from my bike computer...
Note the big jump in speed after she got the bigger bike for her birthday. She's getting faster; I'm getting slower. One suspects she is a speed vampire...