I don’t like to rush time but I am glad August biking is over. The reasons: near miss by Hurricane Laura, 4 days in the hospital, and I missed reaching my mileage goal for the month.

To wrap up the month this morning my Lynskey R300 and I set off at 10:48 AM on the “New Caney – Roman Forest – Valley Ranch” route riding 41.02 miles. A good start for the week, maybe I can get back to riding 200+ miles this week. It wasn’t enough to reach my mileage goal for August though. I could’ve moved closer if I rode yesterday but when I got home from church it was almost 1 o’clock, the temperature was in the upper 90’s and I wanted to watch stage 2 of the Tour de France. Below are two images summarizing my bike riding month. The one on the left recaps my efforts to reach my 800 mile goal. The other image summarizes the 21 bike rides I did during August. The key is only riding 21 days. I rode at least 2 more I probably would’ve reached my goal.

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On today’s bike ride I made good time to Roman Forest thanks to a nice 10 mph tailwind with some 23 mph gusts thrown in. I usually don’t mind the heat but today the dew point hung at 80 degrees. This keeps the evaporation cooling to a minimum while riding. After making the u-turn on Galaxy Blvd. which marked the start of the return to Kingwood the tailwind turned into a headwind that wore down my legs by the time I took a break around mile 27. The Clif Bar helped give my legs some energy but it started running out by the time I made the u-turn under US59 at Kingwood Drive. Also the cold water in my CamelBak wasn’t quite as cold and getting low. When I finished the ride at 2:23 PM there was only a little bit of water left. The cup of cold water I left on the kitchen counter before the ride was still cold and tasted good. The A/C felt good inside after the ride.

While I watched stage 3 of The Tour end this morning I made a fruit salad planning on eating some when I finished the ride, which I did.

Because of the hard work getting back to Kingwood I think Strava decided today’s bike ride was harder than my usual effort.

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I took this picture at the park and pool by the Tavola community center.

Below is the PowerPod bike ride data graphs with the red arrow pointing at the wind graph. The other is SportTracks bike ride summary.