After a week since my last road bike trip I relished the warm weather returning and getting back on my road bike. The morning temperature dipped to 54 degrees (10 more than Tuesday) and by the time I started riding at 11:52 it went up to 76 degrees. When i returned back home at 2:07 four more degrees showed up on the weather station. I must have been skeptical of the warmth because I wore a long sleeve jersey and it felt comfortable the entire ride. The scattered clouds interrupted the sun enough for some coolness in the shade aided by a light 5.8 mph north breeze. The fall weather moved into southeast Texas but the wind shifting to the southwest brought warm weather back for at least a few days. Tomorrow (Thursday) supposedly will repeat today. I plan on another road ride tomorrow as well.

My route decision was more automatic than any great reasoning. I did not even pay that much attention to the wind direction since I was so happy to get back on the bike. I rode my mountain bike Monday but it is not the same. The tried and true route totaled 32.30 miles at a 15.6 mph average speed which agreed across all three of my route software/websites. At the 30 mile point my Garmin showed a 15.8 mph average speed so I only lost .2 mph riding the residential streets for 2 miles. The max speed had some small variation among the three with two of them showing 22.4 mph. Average cadence was 79.2 RPM.

At the Atasca Oaks Drive and Atascocita Road intersection I waited through two signal cycles because I could not trip the light to change. I could have sit through more except for the school bus waiting behind pulled up and tripped the light. Sometimes I ride through the intersection but this one is very busy. As a result my time stopped (11:23) is more than it should be. My total riding time came in at 2:04:05, not counting the time stopped. The two online route services: Garmin connect and RideWithGPS.com.

With today ending October riding I will move into November where I average 300 miles per month. Last year I bumped this up to 387 miles. Mileage standings after today’s ride: 50.68 miles this week, 643.38 miles for October and 5940.23 miles YTD. Only 60 miles away from 6000 for the year. I never been this high before.

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