Heat Index Blows Past 100 Bike Ride
I was sitting at the Huffman Chevron cooling off from riding 22.8 miles on the “Atascocita South – Walden – Huffman” route up to this point. After eating a Kashi Trail Mix bar I pulled out my phone to take a screen shot of the Huffman weather conditions and check email. As I was looking at the weather page it hit me, “feels like 113 degrees”. While it was 93 degrees when I took the screen shot up until I stopped at the Chevron station I had not been too hot to be uncomfortable. The 50% humidity and 12 mph S wind kept me dried enough that sweat wasn’t a problem. I didn’t need that many paper towels to soak up the perspiration as I sat in the shade of the pump canopy. Later (4:04) when I got home my home weather station showed 97 degrees and a 112 degree heat index. Hello, summer in Texas!!
Home weather at the end
The ride distance totaled 34.7 miles today. I got a late start (1:09) because I watched stage 2 of the Tour de France after I got home from church. I didn’t want to wait until after the ride because I might see a spoiler on Twitter or email. I wanted to ride longer than my usual Sunday ride since I took a rest day to celebrate the 4th of July. With today’s ride I rode 215.13 miles this week. That’s two weeks in a row over 200 miles. I am at 139.87 miles for July towards my 834 mile goal. The wind hindered my speed some and I averaged 14.8 mph from 23 to 32.4 miles when it started to slow down as I rode through Kingwood to home.
Watching the Tour today I could see the impact weather has on biking. Many times the terrain comes into play but today the wind split the peloton and several contenders lost time. The terrain where I ride is much like today’s stage, flat as a pancake but sometimes windy. I am 2 to 3 times the age of the pro bikers in the tour so I have to not be so hard on myself when I cannot ride as fast as I want to.
Monday’s weather looks like more of today’s. I am watching some of stage 3 before I bike, maybe all of it depending on what time it finishes. The route for tomorrow is 40+ miles.
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