My original plan was to start today’s bike ride at 8 am but as I started getting ready I heard rain hitting the bathroom skylight. I hoped it was just a passing quick shower but it lasted about 10 minutes, enough to get the streets wet. I decided to wait for the streets to dry and watched the Vuelta a Burgos race on my Pixelbook. The staged ended about 9:25 am and the streets were dry so I got ready to leave.

Yesterday I had a problem with TickrFit heart rate monitor not working. I thought maybe I forgot to charge it so I connected to the charger cable and the green light came on and blinked for awhile meaning it was charging. This morning when I put it on and pushed the button to activate it nothing happened. A blue light is supposed to flash a few times and then it connects to my Elemnt computer. It looks like the battery lost its charge or something else. I deleted the heart rate fields from the Elemnt screen (I love how easy it is to reconfigure the Elemnt with my phone). Now I got ready to leave. It was 10:00 am when I started the ride.

Usually I ride early on Saturday to see other cyclists from Bike Barn Atascocita but with the rain and my late start I didn’t expect to see anyone. That almost was the case except for one cyclist passing going the opposite direction on Atascocita Shores Drive. He was tucked in on aero bars in a time trial position. I waved and I think he waved a couple of fingers back. Later about 3 miles from the finish of the ride while I was waiting to cross W. Lake Houston Parkway by the YMCA another cyclist pulled up beside me. I said hi and we chatted for a couple of minutes. He said he wasn’t from around here and wanted to know where to ride for 20 miles or so. I gave him directions going south and east. We said goodbyes and went on our ways.

After the rain the humidity was heavy and I knew sweat would be rolling pretty quickly. Weather during while bicycling: start 79 (91% humidity), mostly cloudy, wind calm. Finish 90 (67% humidity), mostly cloudy, wind calm.

The ride to Huffman went as planned and I stopped at the Chevron station to refill my water bottle. No rest break needed since this was only 18 miles into the ride because of the route difference when I ride the “Atascocita – Huffman – Walden” route. I ride through Walden after going to Huffman. Not stopping long I was back on FM 1960 riding west. With the favorable wind I switched to the big chainring and up two gears on the rear cassette. I haven’t used that combination in awhile but I sped up to 19+ mph and improved my overall average speed to 14.2 mph while riding over Lake Houston.

At the Atascocita Shores Drive traffic light I shifted back to my normal gear combination to ride through Walden. Exiting Walden I rode north on Pinehurst Trail and then onto Kingwood. I finished the ride at 12:34 pm logging 32.6 miles for the ride. This increased the week’s total to 212.13 miles (5th week in a row of 200+ miles) and the month to 368.65 miles (August’s goal is 800 miles).

Sunday will probably be a rest day. The rain probability decreases starting on Sunday so next week should be dry and not quite August hot.

SportTracks Bike Ride Summary