Damp and dreary weather left the area. Sun returned before I started today’s bike ride at 11:56 AM. Wind returned too. Thinking of of route options I wanted one over 40 miles. I settled on a variation of the “Stroker Road – Huffman” route to avoid the construction on FM 2100. I called this variation the “Kingwood – Stroker Road – Kingwood” route. The last time I bike to Stroker Road was June 30th, 2020. Today’s route was longer than the other coming in at 46.47 miles versus 43 miles. I needed the extra miles to make up for the shorter Zwift ride yesterday. My week now totals 137.14 miles putting 200+ miles within reach weather permitting. March totals 571.1 road miles towards my 600 mile goal. Today was the longest bike ride this year.

Wind increased due to a front moving into the area. Getting to Stroker Road a tailwind pushed me but coming back the headwind tried to slow me down. During the ride the wind got stronger. What the weather conditions were: start 72 (61% humidity, 57.5 dew point), partly cloudy, wind NW 12 mph; finish 79 (35% humidity, 49.4 dew point), a few clouds, wind NW 14 mph gusts 22 mph. I wasn’t sure the temperature would get to the 80 degree forecast so I wore shorts, long sleeve jersey, and a windbreaker jacket. By the time I finished at 3:34 PM I looked at the jacket and saw salt stains from sweating but I didn’t feel overly hot. I think the strong wind took care of that.

I modified the Drift camera setup, adding shelf liner under the camera to keep it from moving and isolate picking up sound from the handlebar. I also moved the external mic from resting on top of the camera hoping to cut down on the noise and put a cover on the builtin mic to mute it some. Wind noise still shows up but not quite as bad. I am waiting on a mount to move the Drift camera below my bike computer.

With the strong wind and power output Strava concluded today’s bike ride was harder than my usual efforts.