The American Athletic Conference Basketball tournament overrode my biking plans yesterday (3/17/2019 Sunday) with a little help from cooler weather when I got home from church.

Today was a different story as I set at 12:09 PM to ride the “New Caney – Gene Campbell Road” route biking 37.80 miles. This boosted March to 380.02 miles leaving me 205 miles to reach my goal for March.

Hoping the forecasted 70 degrees would appear before I began I checked the weather as my departure time got near but it fell several degrees short. Weather during the bike ride: start 66 (37% humidity), overcast, wind E 10 mph. Finish 70 (29% humidity), overcast, wind SE 9 mph. So I bundled up some. At first I debated about wearing leg warmers but the temperature refused to go up from 66 so I donned the leg warmers, adding shorts, a long sleeve thermal jersey, wind breaker jacket and regular biking gloves. For 15 minutes into the ride I thought I made a mistake by not adding a short sleeve jersey and full finger gloves but once the body heat kicked in I forgot about chilled fingers and upper body.

With the southeast wind biking to New Caney wasn’t too hard. Making the u-turn under I-69/US59 by Caney Creek I expected the wind to hit me when I got back up to ground level but it wasn’t too hard. Biking west on FM 1485 and Gene Campbell Blvd. the tailwind allowed to keep my speed between 16 and 18 mph. But making the left turn onto FM 1314 heading into the wind the work increased to maintain my 14.2 mph average I had built up to that point.

The official weather says the sky was overcast but to the west and north blue broke through the clouds. With two chemical plants on the southeast side of Houston putting out large volumes of smoke from fires the sky in that direction had a decided gray tint.

Around the 31 mile point the average speed dropped to 14.1 mph because the wind finally took its toll on my legs and the stops slowed me down. By the end of the ride at 2:55 PM the average speed came to 13.9 mph due to the stops and starts in Kingwood.

Data from the ride:

• average heart rate: 135 (77%)
• max heart rate: 158 (90%)
• average power: 133 watts
• max power: 535 watts

Tuesday weather forecast: High 71 F, 0% Precip. / 0.00 in., Sunny. High 71F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Nice biking weather.

Still trailing 2018, 2017 and 2016. 2014 is not far behind. I have my work cut out for me to catch these years.