Spectacular weather for today’s bike ride. I started at 10:41 under a partly cloudy sky with 79 degrees, light SSE 11.5 mph breeze and 74% humidity. It felt so comfortable that I did not mind riding into the wind when I turned back south at SR242. There is a Flying J truck center at SR242 and US59 and what caught my eye was the $3.299 price for unleaded gasoline. I haven’t seen a price this low since 7/23/2012. Back to biking, by the time I got back home at 1:03 the partly cloudy sky still held but the temperature bumped up to 88 degrees with 49% humidity. Again the ride produced low perspiration so I might consider not wearing my wrist bands on the next ride. My gloves showed no signs of moisture either but I will continue to wear them. The weather forecast shows a front coming through on Friday with cooler temperatures and maybe some rain.

I used to ride most of today’s route before I started using a Garmin 305 and Edge 500. The reason I reduced my frequency comes from not wanting to ride out and back on the same roads. That is why I tweaked the route when I got to Roman Forest Blvd. going north by turning onto Roman Forest Blvd and then taking a left onto the side road that parallels the railroad tracks to Woodbranch where I got back on the north US59 service road for the short ride to my turnaround point at SR242. Up to that point most my ride was with the wind. Taking the overpass to the southbound US59 service road put me into the wind from there to almost the finish. Surprisingly I still maintained a decent speed so that when I checked my average speed at 30 miles it showed 16.1 mph.

To further distance my southbound trip from the northbound one I turned into Valley Ranch around the 22.3 mile point. This took me west for about a mile and then back south across FM1314, through the Briar Tree subdivision and then to Oakhurst before getting back on the southbound US59 service road. I ride this part of the route several times a week but not as part of this whole route. My ride ended at 35.16 miles with a 15.7 mph average speed, 21.9 mph max speed (SportTracks shows a generous 26.2 mph) according to Garmin Connect and 21.5 mph from RideWithGPS.com, and 79.6 RPM average cadence.

Normally I take a rest stop on a ride this long but today I only stopped for a few minutes in New Caney at the Chevron station to refill my water bottle. The riding time totaled 2:14:10 plus 6:56 time stopped. Mileage totals after today’s ride: 69.79 miles this week, 592.7 miles in October, and 5889.54 miles YTD. There are enough riding days left in October that I could reach 6000 miles for the year by the end of the month. No other serious bicyclists today but three casual ones crossed my path.

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