My father always told me. “Work before play.” Today was one of those times. My wife, our niece and myself worked in the yard trying to finish up the planting and mulching. We almost made it when I called “time’s up.” Since this is not my favorite activity and my wife tends to overdo it I set a time period so that we don’t. Also I wanted enough time left to play, which to me means biking. With just a few plants left (less than 3 or 4 and all of the mulch placed) one more work session should do it.

Back to biking. The weather cooperated today but not quite as spectacular as yesterday. Scattered clouds with plenty of sun, 83 degrees, 42% humidity, and a light 8 mph south breeze awaited my biking pleasure. With the yard work I did not leave until 2:32 and returned at 4:58. This put me in the midst of the high school dismissal so I maneuvered around inattentive students wandering around the sidewalks at Kingwood High School in the first 3 to 4 miles of the ride. I almost thought of myself as invisible. After I got past there the school traffic dropped off until the grade schools got out. I wonder why the high school gets out so much earlier?

The route was my standard Huffman loop with a slight variation to get the mileage over 29 miles. It ended up being 30.35 miles. I wanted to try to make up for Tuesday but it will take more than a mile each day. The mental part of being 30 miles carries some weight, I guess. I ran a report at Garmin Connect for the year so far and my average ride is 26.4 miles. Surprisingly the year to date total for Garmin Connect is only about 2 miles more than SportTracks. These two never agree on the route mileage so I thought the difference would be much more. I did not run a report at RideWithGPS.com. With three more potential bicycling days this week I still could get 90+ more miles.

Two other bikers passed in my view which I did not expect being a weekday. Tomorrow we plan on going on the Kingwood Garden Club home garden tour so I might bike early or late. The weather tomorrow shows rain and Saturday the temperature will be cooler with the high at 70 degrees. The BP MS150 ride on Saturday will be a cool one.

Some of today’s ride stats:

• 2:00:44 riding time
• 15.1 mph average speed
• 24.8 mph max speed
• 80.2 RPM average cadence
• 63.28 miles this week
• 406.1 miles in April
• 1625.45 miles YTD
• Garmin Connect data link

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4-19-2012 Home Weather Station End