Oh man, is it ever! Saw some fight in him for sure instead of resignation.
Bastid sandbagged me <g>. He'd been saying he was only good for ~20 miles out in the flats (bleah) but I need more workout than that to justify the time bloc, so I rode to his house, which is 20 miles, and I pushed hard up and over 1/2 of my main hard climbing route to get there.... Got to his place pretty tired and ready for 20 miles of spinning <g>.... Then, he proceeds to say hey I feel pretty good! Let's climb High Pass! I will never say no to a climb but I hadn't paced myself for more climbing. Then he says, how about a sliver of Grimes, which is an extremely difficult obscure 1-laner of crappy old blacktop up and over the coast range... it's a relentless, steep, long, and did I mention very steep climb? We ended up doing about 2/3 of the damn thing. Fawk!
The IT band thing is a real problem. Once it starts, I haven't figured out anything to stop it (other than getting off the bike)... and it pretty much shuts that leg down. Gotta stay on top of that one.