I planned on riding my Canyon Endurace bike today but after seeing pictures on Bikeforums.net from a poster of his Lynskey GR300 I changed my mind and switched to my Lynskey R300 bike. They are not quite the same but close enough, the “G” stands for gravel.

After riding north yesterday I chose a southerly route even though I plan on riding that direction tomorrow. I picked the “Atascocita South – Walden – Huffman” route and rode 34.08 miles. Today made the 9th time biking this route in 2020; 6 times on my Canyon Endurace and 3 times on the my Lynskey R300. I like this route because of the different scenery and minimizing biking the same streets out and back. To start the ride I varied it by going through Sherwood Trails and North Woodland Hills villages in Kingwood before connecting with my usual streets. Later on when I reached FM 2100 I planned on making a u-turn and ride back to FM 1960. But as I sat waiting for the traffic to clear I looked north on FM 2100 and saw no orange barrels blocking the shoulder in the construction zone. I decided to ride north on FM 2100 and the barrels were gone leaving dirt circles on the shoulder where they used to be. I plan on repeating this on tomorrow’s ride, weather permitting.

I improved the week’s total to 158.71 miles. I may have written off reaching 200+ miles for the week too quickly. If I bike 31 miles tomorrow (Saturday) and 12 miles Sunday I can do it. Marching closer to my 800 mile goal for August I narrowed the miles behind to less than 50. I won’t reach my goal but I will be closer than I thought. The recap so far.

Unlike my ride on Wednesday on a similar route my legs did not get overwhelmed by an easterly wind. Today the wind came from the SW and helped me get to FM 2100. Something happens after a storm goes through or nearby to the weather. Since Laura’s passing it has gotten hotter. When I started the ride at 10:02 AM it was already 92 and at the 12:58 PM finish it was 97. During August rain has been rare so everything is dry and more dry. Today I was looking for some shade as I rode east on Old Atascocita Road but there wasn’t a big enough spot to get in and drink some cold water. I had to wait until I reached Huffman to take a several minute break at the Chevron station. While it was hot there was a nice breeze blowing under the pump canopy. I hated to leave. What the weather looked like at the start and finish: start 92 (71% humidity, 81.7 dew point), partly cloudy, wind SW 8 mph, finish 97 (58% humidity, 80 dew point), mostly cloudy, wind SW 8 mph gusts 20 mph. I didn’t realize the wind was that strong until after finishing the ride. Looking at the wind graph in the PowerPod bike ride data graphs below I see that strong wind as I rode west on FM 1960 over Lake Houston.

Validating my better performance on today’s bike ride compared to Wednesday’s Strava tells me the ride was harder than my usual effort.

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I marked the wind graph in the PowerPod bike ride graphs (image on the left, click to enlarge it) with a red arrow. Around mile 23 was when I turned west in Huffman into the stiff headwind as shown by the blue area above the white line. Bike rides would be perfect if there were no headwinds. Link to SportTracks bike ride activity.

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I avoided the lost video from my GoPro cameras by renaming the clips with duplicate file names today.