Another hot and dry day for a bike ride. I chose the “New Caney – Gene Campbell Road” to the north for some variety and rode 36.6 miles pushing the month total to 362 miles, 438 miles short of my goal and the week to 186 miles. At the 10:13 am start it was 88 degrees and when I finished at 1:30 pm it was 96 with the heat index at 110 degrees. Thank goodness I had plenty of ice water with a stop at the Texaco station on FM 1314 after I came off of Gene Campbell Blvd. About 4 miles later I stopped st the Valero station at Sorters Road for a 25 minute break where I bought a very large Gatorade orange fountain drink for $.79, on sale. This 25.4 miles into the ride.

I could’ve started the bike ride earlier but I watched the BinckBank Tour from Europe on www.cycling.tv. Also since I wasn’t riding to the south no need to hurry to see other bicyclists along the route.

Sitting in the shade the light westerly breeze felt good as the cold Gatorade went down. When the time came to leave I had to remind myself that the bike ride needed to finish and the remaining 12 miles were out there waiting for me to go. Riding SE the breeze felt good blowing through my jersey and keeping the sweat from running down my arms.

Somewhere along the route I managed to output 1256 watts for the high. Maybe that was when I sprinted to put my max speed up to 22.8 mph?

Nothing out of the ordinary crossed my path but I did see one cyclist on the streets of Elm Grove Village as I made my way out of Kingwood. We waved at each other. Later in Woodridge Forest a lady was out looking for a missing pet clapping and walking along. A couple of streets later I saw a white fluffy dog running through some yards and I circled back to ask the lady if she was looking for this dog but I couldn’t find her.

National Bike Challenge ranking after today’s ride improved.

First time I am ranked below 60 for Texas and triple digit ranking for national, before I was above 1000. I can’t make it to #1 for Houston though.

More hot weather on Sunday. I plan bicycling around 25 miles to put the week over 200 miles.

RideWithGPS.com map and metrics