I finally made up my mind to start a ride early in the morning, like 6:31 am. The was up and the sky looked great as I headed out on the “Kingwood-Community Drive-Valley Ranch” route. My plan was to ride at least 24 miles and ended up biking 25.25 miles to start off July bicycling. This equates to 3% of my 800 mile goal for July.

A reason for the early ride was at church (First United Methodist, Humble, TX) there was one worship service “God and Country” at 10 am. My wife was going with me along with my niece and her roommate, Brandi. I expected it would be it would be afternoon before we got back home with picnic that followed worship and to avoid the heat the early bike ride was the answer plus I have meant to do this since the sunrise is around 6:30 am. I may repeat this on July 4th so biking will not conflict with the Kingwood parade.

The weather during the bike ride: Weather: start 74 (99% humidity), a few clouds, wind calm. Finish 79 (90% humidity), a few clouds, wind calm. The temperature was cooler but boy the humidity was heavy. At the finish I was drenched and the sky had just a few clouds.

After yesterday’s ride I hooked the PowerPod up to my desktop computer and started messing with the Issac software for the PowerPod. I must’ve changed something (actually I changed a lot of settings) and at the beginning of today’s bike ride after I pushed PP start button the LED flashed red. Then it started flashing red/green which I learned earlier this week means the calibration was not completed. I pushed the start button in a couple of different ways and after not getting anywhere the yellow LED came on which means the calibration starts and the watts starting counting from 1 to 100. At 100 the PP flashed a huge watts number (18,500 or so) and then real numbers appeared on the Elemnt and all was happy, including me. For the rest of the ride the PowerPod and Elemnt were a happy twosome.

As I biked through Woodridge Forest on the way to I-69/US59 I stopped and took these sunrise photos.

Sahara dust should arrive in the sky today so it will be hazy for a day or two while it passes through. This might be why the sky in the photo has a gold tint.

Cycling north on the I-69/US59 service road traffic was light. No problem making the u-turn at Community Drive starting the return leg with still no traffic. Riding through Valley Ranch went smoothly and I arrived at FM 1314 in time to see another cyclist approaching from the west on FM 1314 and make the right turn onto Old Sorters Road. I thought I would probably not see him again but as I rode toward the schools in Briar Tree I saw him ahead. As I made the curve south of the schools I saw he made a u-turn and headed back to me. I waved and said hello as he passed.

The ride was staying on time to get me back home and I finished at 8:14 am leaving me an hour to get ready for church which was just right. One reason for the on time arrival was not stopping for traffic lights. The one at Community Drive was missed because I took the u-turn. Earlier at FM 1314 my timing was good with the light being green as I rode arrived. The only one I had to stop for was at FM 1314 and Old Sorters Road which was okay because I need a break to drink and for the legs to recover for the last 11+ miles.

After yesterday’s ride I was comparing my YTD mileage on Strava to SportTracks and found I biked more miles than SportTracks reported. The reason is I look at the YTD miles versus my goal which only includes road miles, not trainer miles. Some time when I entered a ride into SportTracks or synced with the desktop version a few rides got a tag that excluded them from the YTD number. Instead of 3800+ miles the real YTD total was 4,022 miles. With today’s ride I am at 4,047 miles. If I maintain the rate I would hit 8,500 miles for 2018. This is way beyond my highest for a year, 7,488 miles in 2017.

While I was looking at Strava.com I came across an app that compares my total Strava distance versus all Strava users. I was astonished to be 602nd out of 43,502 users.

More good weather on Monday for biking.

SportTracks Bike Ride Summary

The PowerPod calibration period is clearly shown with the flat power curve for the first 2 miles.