The remnants of tropical storm Isaac still affected the wind when I left for today’s ride at 11:04 AM. I delayed the start until I finished watching the Vuelta a Espana stage 12. I reverted to EuroSport when Dish Network put Universal Sports back on an extra subscription. I am not sure why Dish removed the subscription so that I could watch the first 10 stages. When I left on my ride 13 to 18 mph winds awaited. Thankfully the wind came out of the WNW and I rode to the south so I enjoyed a tailwind for awhile. Whenever I turned into the wind the legs complained. My right calf muscle still hurts if I sit for too long but it offers no pain signals when I ride.

By the time I finished the wind settled down to 9 mph from the WNW. Temperature moved up from the time I left to 93 degrees but the humidity decreased to 39%. The clouds increased to scattered by the end. At first the sky was a nice clear blue.

I chose the Atascocita – Walden on Lake Houston – Huffman route to see if the construction on the FM1960 Lake Houston Causeway finished like the project sign advertised when they first began. I am glad to report the construction job completed and I can now ride the proper shoulders in both directions. This route was 32.03 miles long. My average speed was 15.2 mph but until I turned west from FM2100 to FM1960 into the stiff wind I built it up to 15.6 mph. Max speed was 21.5 mph and average cadence was 76.5 RPM, which is lower than I expected. I did feel like all of my energy left when I started north on W. Lake Houston Parkway. Fortunately I had a package of Clif Shot Bloks from the Hotter’n Hell Hundred in my CamelBak so I stopped at Kings Harbor to eat them. While I stood eating a Houston Fire Department EMS ambulance pulled up with lights flashing and siren. The crew got a stretcher out and went into the restaurant in front of me; not sure what the situation was.

A little later as I rode on Rustic Woods Drive another biker caught up and passed me going the same direction. My legs were not strong enough to keep up since this was going into the wind. I used a lot of energy going west on FM1960 over Lake Houston. At one point I stood up pedaling to get my speed up to 12 mph. Out in the middle of the causeway nothing blocks the wind. Looking at the Speed-Distance chart below the amount of time I rode in zone 3 totaled 58.8% which is about 20 % below my typical ride.

With one day left in August my miles total 744.75. I rode 120.11 miles this week and 4679.71 miles YTD. SportTracks shows my Motobecane Le Champion CF road bike odometer at 9997 miles. Today’s riding time: 2:06:34, stopped time of 15:34 (eating shot bloks). 23 riding days in August so far. Link to RideWithGPS.com map and metrics.

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