Last Saturday I drove to the Houston Cycling Club Kingwood/Humble ride start point but today I rode my bike. When I got to the glass gazebo in front of Sears Hardware two bicyclists were waiting. David and Ron had their bikes out of their vehicles getting ready to ride. The temperature at my house was 66 degrees when I left so I donned my 60 degree riding wardrobe of a short sleeve jersey, long sleeve jersey, leg warmers, shorts (of course) and windbreaker jacket. The forecast called for mid 70’s but our ride was starting at 9 AM so it did not have enough time to warm up much. We talked about how I would probably be sweating a whole lot during the ride. Ron was dressed similar to me but without the jacket and David skipped the leg warmers and jacket but added arm warmers. They were right because I was warmed up by the time I got to the glass gazebo but I decided to keep everything on and ride.

Our route repeated last Saturday’s, going north on US59 with a nice tailwind. We did get about 20 to 30 raindrops around Community Drive but they went away quickly. On SR242 the wind still was a help most of the time. I think a few raindrops fell as we passed Firetower Road but again not much happened which is good because there was no place to get out of the rain. We stopped at SR242 and FM1485 for a few minutes. Ron said we were 8 minutes faster than last week’s time. From there we headed to SR242 and FM1314 to turn into the wind and back to the starting point. I wondered why my legs were complaining so much about riding SE on FM1314. At home I checked the weather to find the SSE wind at 13 mph and 21 mph gusts. A good reason to ride slower.

Another stop at the Valero station on FM1314 gave us some recovery time for the final 6 or 7 miles. About there the road swings away from the SE to the east and the wind seemed to let up a small bit but when we reached the southbound US59 service road it was back to the full headwind until we got to Kingwood Drive where a u-turn  to the northbound service brought the tailwind back to the finish point. Up to this point I rode about 40.4 miles. Riding home from there my total miles were 45.34. At the finish I asked Ron how our total stacked up to last week and he said we were about 3 minutes faster. So the wind took a toll of about 5 minutes from the last checkpoint. The temperature made it to 76 when I got home and my clothes were soaked with sweat. Overall I averaged 15.5 mph including my slow riding the last 5 miles to home.

My March goal is well in hand with 633.05 miles for the month. Year to date I rode 1314.64 miles. For alternate views of the ride stats and map look at Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com.

The wildflowers are starting bloom along side the road. I need to stop and take some pictures on my next ride.

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