The goal for today’s bike ride was to go far enough to lower the miles needed to reach my 6,000 mile goal for the end of September. I selected the “Oakhurst – Valley Ranch” route biking 25.6 miles and this produced the result I wanted with only 91 miles left to hit the 6,000 mile goal. With 5 potential riding days left in September I think I can reach my goal with maybe a few miles to spare. The reason I say 5 riding days is that one day I take my wife to the medical center for treatment.

After yesterday’s bike ride the USPS delivered my Power Pod power meter. Before today’s ride I plugged it into my computer to check it out. There were all of the ride data up to when it stopped working which leads me to believe this is the same unit I sent back and not the new unit I was supposed to get. However, I transferred the profile over and erased all of the old data for a clean start and maybe delete something that caused the failure. I installed the Power Pod on the Stradalli before the ride and got ready to leave. I left at 12:32 PM not sure how the Power Pod would respond. I got the “0” for watts and saw it was communicating with the Elemnt computer but no watts showed. I pressed the Power Pod start button for a few seconds and it entered the setup mode counting up to 100 as I rode. When it reached 100 there was a pause and 41,303 watts showed before it settled down to a more realistic reading. From the rest of the ride I think it showed a reasonable wattage number though at the finish Strava shows my max watts at 1601, way beyond my ability. I don’t have a way to edit out the spike I found out a text editor will work to edit the file but the next ride should be a normal amount, I hope.

Starting later than normal (after church today) meant the weather had time to heat up. The conditions at the start were 90 degrees, 68% humidity, partly cloudy sky and a SE wind at 13 mph. At the 2:27 PM finish the temperature edged up to 92 while the humidity dropped to 58%. The sky and wind were unchanged.

Good biking weather on Monday as I chase the 6,000 mile goal.

Strava Ride Summary (click on the image to go to Strava.com)