After dumping 5.5″ of rain at my home yesterday the weather turned around for today’s bike ride on the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route. I set out at 10:35 am, a little later than I planned but not bad. I bicycled 34.18 miles improving July to 138.34 miles, leaving 661.66 miles to reach my July goal of 800 miles. Weather at the start and finish from my home weather station.

Wind was light to calm posing no major problem for cycling. The temperature was lower probably from the rain cooling the ground off some. When I rode over the San Jacinto River on W. Lake Houston Parkway I saw the water level increased from the runoff of yesterday’s rain. Later as I crossed Lake Houston on FM 1960 the water was higher too.

No rest stop on today’s ride but I did stop for a couple of minutes at the Huffman Chevron to refill my water bottle. The pumps were shut down today because a crew was working on the tanks so not much activity. This was at the 22 mile point in the ride.

Biking west on FM 1960 from Huffman went nicely thanks to no headwind to speak of. The PowerPod watts maxed out around 120 and sometimes dipped to 0 when a car or truck went by sucking me and the wind along. I was thinking of watts expended and efficiency. While generating high watts is impressive the real measurement is how few watts are needed to generate the fastest time or speed from point A to point B. For instance coasting downhill for 10 miles would require low watts but speed probably will be determined by how aerodynamic the biker becomes. Also I was reminded by the PowerPod instructions to not change the calibration too many times. While different powermeters report different watts outputs for a given effort consistency from the powermeter used will be the best way to compare results.

I made my way back to Kingwood and in Town Center passed another cyclist going the opposite direction for my only sighting today. The ride finished at 1:13 pm.

Weather forecast for Friday looks like today’s with some scattered rain possible in the afternoon. Bike early and stay dry.

While I was out biking UPS delivered my new floor pump, the Lezyne Floor Drive Bicycle Pump from Performance Bicycle. It was on sale and my current pump is many years old. I did not realize how big the gauge would be but that is a good thing with my older eyesight.

SportTracks Bike Ride Summary