Blustery wind awaited me as I began today’s bike ride. For I chose to ride the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route. I needed to ride at least 30 miles to push my total for the week to 200+ miles. I rode 33.15 miles and the week’s total stands at 203.68 miles. If I ride tomorrow (Sunday) it add to that total. This is the first week in 2019 with 200+ miles. In 2018 my first 200+ mile week was February 26 to March 4th with 226.26 miles. So I am several weeks later this year. This partially explains why this YTD trails 2018 YTD miles. As far as my reaching my March goal of 585 miles I am 93% of the way there with 545.9 miles so far.

Speaking of the wind, choosing a route with 20 out of 33 miles into the wind probably wasn’t the best idea. Starting the ride at 12:18 PM after watching the finish of the Milan-Sanremo race on Flobikes.com I took screenshots of the weather like I normally do. The temperature was about 9 degrees cooler than Friday and the wind was much stronger: SE 10 mph with 18 mph gusts. I waffled on what to wear a couple of times landing on shorts (of course), a regular long sleeve jersey with a BikeTiresDirect.com thin jacket over the jersey. With the lower temperature and strong wind I never was comfortable during the ride. The jacket has breathing mesh on the inside of each arm and the cool wind seemed to zero in on that keeping my arms chilly.

At the 19.8 mile point I finally turned left onto FM 2100 putting the wind at my back for the ride to FM 1960 about 1.4 miles to the north. For most of the ride back to Kingwood the wind stayed in that position. This enabled me to work on improving my average speed from 13.3 mph to 13.8 mph by the time I got back into Kingwood. I finished the ride at 2:58 PM glad to get out of the wind and indoors.

Sunday weather should warm up to 78 with no rain and partly cloudy skies. I plan on biking to add to this week’s miles.

I am not narrowing the gap between 2019 and 2016, 2017 and 2018 YTD miles. Still about 60 miles behind 2016 and 2018 and 130 miles behind 2017.