Today was a change of pace ride on my Motobecane 700HT mountain bike. The community I live in has about 60 miles of greenbelt trails (with the drought they could be called brown belt trails). I wanted to keep in touch with my MTB and today was an opportunity to actually ride in some dirt, very dry dirt in fact. Riding a mountain bike seems different from a road bike. I notice some muscles feel different and the choice of hand positions is much less. To top it off I dismounted at one point and smashed my knee into the rear rack. This was not what I planned on for using different muscles. I sometimes am hesitant to ride on the trails because of the number of people you can encounter and they always seem to appear at tricky places to avoid them. There were a number of people on the trails today but no problems or surprises.

With the heat (84 degrees at the start and 93 at the finish) it was nice riding in the shade most of the time among the trees. Clear skies and a light breeze continue the string that has been going on forever it seems. Yesterday it was 106.4 degrees at my home weather station. Humidity is very low for southeast Texas but with the heat we have been experiencing this is not surprising.

Today’s ride was 16.8 miles at a 11.0 average speed. One nice hill generated a max speed of 24.4 mph. August miles are 335.28 and year to date miles are 3773.93.

Tomorrow I will be back on my road bike.

8-19-2011 Bike Ride Data and Route Map

8-19-2011 Home Weather Finish

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