While my road bike awaits repair at the Better Bicycles shop the Motobecane 700HT MTB moves to the bike of choice. My favorite ride is my road bike but I do enjoy the change of pace when I ride my mountain bike. The pedaling effort is definitely different from a road bike and the riding position lines up my muscles so that they feel stressed.The workout numbers fell below my road bike level.

Choosing the mountain bike I decided to ride on the Kingwood biking trails. The look along the trails differs from what I saw back in February. I also did not have to dodge crews cutting down trees today. This past Wednesday I went to the annual meeting of the Bear Branch Trail Association. They own and manage 14 miles of biking trails covering the village I live and several that butt up to it. At the meeting the state of the trails report said that since August 2011 the association cut down 1,286 dead trees along the trails. This describes what the drought did to the forest along the trails. The cost totaled over $224,000. Some dead trees still exist so more cutting will take place. Even with this damage the trails look like they could recover but it will take 10 years or so. I took some pictures to show some green.

Overcast skies and the temperature hovering around 80 degrees felt nice as I pedaled along the trails. With the trees the light 6.9 mph south wind never made it to me. Yesterday’s rain bumped up the humidity some to 67%; not Houston sticky yet.

Toady’s ride numbers:

• 1:29:44 riding time
• 17.58 miles
• 11.8 mph average speed
• 21.2 mph max speed
• 75.4 RPM average cadence
• 104.01 miles this week
• 567.90 miles in March (average 349 miles in March)
• 1203.99 miles YTD
• Garmin Connect data link

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3-30-2012 Home Weather Station End