For the second Saturday in a row the wind dominates the biking environment. Today’s wind did not quite match last Saturday but it still presented an extra barrier to overcome. Today’s wind: 17.3 mph with 23 mph gusts from the NW. After yesterday’s rain front passed through the temperature dropped to 54 degrees this morning and slowly warmed up to 72 by the time I left at 1:30 PM. I completed the ride at 3:48 with a 77 temperature. Courtesy of the front the blue sky had a color depth where you almost see forever. Hopefully Saturdays will not be high wind days on a regular basis. Tomorrow’s weather should be warmer, clear and without so much wind.

After all of the effort I expended yesterday trying to outrun the rain I thought my legs would not respond with much power. To help I started off the ride heading south with the wind at my back. The reasoning: buildup up my average speed early then try to hang on when I turned back home and into the NW wind. I think I accomplished this with 21.22 miles at 17.1 mph out of the 30.96 miles for the whole ride. My first 5 mile split was done in 20:30 which is about a minute and a half better than usual. My overall average speed ended up at 15.1 mph. My max speed got up to 27.0 mph, thanks to the tailwind, with my average cadence of 73.2 RPM.

Ride data highlights:

• 2:02:56 riding time
• 3:58 minutes per mile on average
• 123.92 miles this week
• 466.73 miles this week
• 1686.09 miles YTD
• 15 riding days this month
• Garmin Connect data link

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4-21-2012 Home Weather Station End