Road Bike Miles with an Overcast Sky
Riding two days in a row in January is unusual given the quick weather swings. The forecast called for some sun after 10AM but it never happened. The temperature crawled into the 60’s by the time I started the ride at 1:10 but the overcast sky and 86% humidity meant the ride had a damp feel to it. I wanted to get 30+ miles in so I chose the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route and ended up biking 31.08 miles.
This was the first ride on my Stradalli this year and the Garmin Edge 520 was not too happy about it. Up to the 6.6 mile point the Garmin kept telling me the phone is disconnected about every mile or so. I had paired the Bluetooth on my new Nexus 6P with the Garmin and I thought it worked when I rode my MTB earlier this week. I stopped at 6.5 miles as I was getting ready to turn south out of Kingwood Greens onto W. Lake Houston Parkway. I checked my phone for Bluetooth settings and stopped the ride on the 520. I am not sure what this did but the disconnect messages stopped. When I got home I checked my phone’s Bluetooth devices and the 520 was gone so I think the messages stopped because the phone stopped connecting. While I was stopped I took these two pictures.
I dressed warm for the ride with a full compliment of clothing: shorts, leg warmers half finger gloves, short sleeve jersey, long sleeve jersey and windbreaker jacket. Starting out the damp breeze (9 mph) cut through me but as I warmed up it wasn’t an issue until I stopped at traffic lights. The wait was just long enough for me to cool down some. The longest stop was at the Huffman Chevron where I took a short break to eat 6 powdered donuts in defiance of the government’s warning of eating sugar. I needed some energy to get back home. Leaving the Chevron station I rode west with a tailwind and improved my average speed to almost 14 mph. My out of shape legs could not overcome the breeze up to that point and my average speed was just barely 13 mph.
Pulling into the driveway at 3:48 my jerseys were soaked from all of the sweat and the unvented jacket I was wearing. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees from when I left. Tonight we could get some rain as the next cool/cold front passes through. Biking on Saturday looks iffy. I have 195 miles left to reach my 259 goal for January. Today’s ride alomst doubled my miles for January. Road rides go further.
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