Happy 4th of July! I wasn’t sure if I would see other cyclists along the “Atascocita – Huffman – Walden” route when I set off today at 8:02 AM. I ride this route on Saturday’s because I have the opportunity to see cyclists but today they were few. I saw 4 or 5 at the church on Fairlake Lane and others scattered along the route but not as many usual.

Today I rode 31.87 miles raising my week’s total to 223.01 miles, restarting my 200+ miles per week string after falling short last week. July is off to a good start with 137.37 miles towards my 800 mile goal. Year to date I biked 4,479 road miles and 542 Zwift miles. The Canyon Endurace odometer rolled to 17,556 miles since I started riding it in February 2018. I did notice the chain needs to be waxed so I will take care of that soon.

I liked the somewhat cooler temperature when starting the ride this morning. Finishing at 10:23 AM meant not biking when it was 90+. What the weather conditions looked liked: start 76 (99% humidity, 75.3 dew point), partly cloudy, wind calm. Finish 87 (77% humidity, 78.6 dew point), mostly cloudy, wind W 10 mph. The humidity made me feel cooler but as I warmed up it encouraged my body to produce lots of sweat. Saharan dust still hangs out making the sun dull but not any cooler.

Reserving today’s route for Saturdays I have biked it 10 times so far in 2020.

Today’s mileage was not the shortest but came in at 9th on the list. With the help of the west wind I was able to get to 14.0 mph average speed before getting to Fairlake Lane and improved to 14.2 mph into the headwind when biking west over Lake Houston. Winding through Walden it dropped to 14.1 mph and stayed there until I was back in Kingwood.