Day two of 2021 bike rides. Choosing a northerly route I headed out at 11:35 AM on my Lynskey R300 bike on my “Kingwood – SH 242 – Kingwood” route. Like yesterday I altered the beginning of the ride so that at the end I wouldn’t ride on the same streets. By the time I completed the ride at 2:27 PM I rode 36.51 miles, about average for this route. So the altered beginning didn’t increase or decrease the distance. In 2020 I bike this route 12 times, 10 time on my Canyon Endurace and 2 times on my Lynskey R300.

The temperatures for today’s bike ride with the historical average of 62 and actual today at the start was 70 and 76 at the finish. Wind was 12 mph from the SW as I began, dropping to 5 mph at the end of the ride. I wore shorts, a long sleeve jersey, and windbreaker jacket. Early in the ride my legs were chilly with no leg warmers and shade but after I warmed up the chill wasn’t noticeable. I thought a headwind would make the return to Kingwood difficult but it turned out to not be as hard as I expected thanks to the wind speed decreasing. Also the south bound part of the ride has trees on my right slowing the wind some. Whenever I rode out in the open the wind was challenging.

I built my average speed up to 14.2 mph and held it there until I entered Oakhurst where it dropped to 14.1 mph. It remained there as I rode to Kings Manor where it slowly decreased as I made my way to the finish. The final average speed was 13.9 mph.

Looking at my Strava activity page it announced that my ride was harder than my usual efforts. This ride gained 43 feet in elevation, typical for the Houston area.

Golden Cheetah bike ride summary data shows 49% of the 2:38:41 moving time was in zones 1 and 2 with the balance in zones 3 through 7. More data below.