With today’s bike ride I almost reached 200 miles for the week. I chose the “Oakhurst – Gene Campbell Road – Valley Ranch” route and biked 38.40 miles, 198.45 miles for the week and 455.94 miles for June.

Because it is Flag Day I wore my USA red, white and blue jersey with blue arm sleeves.

The weather is transitioning back to the typical June scenario: start 88 (58% humidity, 71 dew point), overcast, wind S 12 mph. Finish 90 (56% humidity, 72 dew point), mostly cloudy, wind S 8 mph.

At the beginning of the ride (10:41 AM start time) I noticed the power reading from the PowerPod showed n/a on my Elemnt computer. I switched to the sensor page on the Elemnt to see what was connected and the PowerPod didn’t show up. I thought I had pushed the PowerPod button like I normally do the spun the front wheel to wake up the speed sensor and turned the crank to wake up the cadence sensor. Both of those sensors starting blinking blue meaning they were awake and connected. I pushed the PowerPod button again and still no connection. Not wanting to delay my ride I rolled out and kept an eye on the watts on the Elemnt. The n/a wouldn’t go away and I pushed the button again. Over the next 4 to 5 miles I tried numerous PowerPod button push combinations moving the PowerPod into the out/back calibration mode. This wouldn’t complete for reason and after many attempts I turned it off and rode without power readings. This happened after many weeks, if not months, of the PowerPod working the way it is supposed to. I will connect it to the Isaac software and see what is going on.

Following up on increasing my effort after stopping at the Stripes station on FM 1314 I changed gears to the big ring up front and a larger gear on the rear cassette. Keeping my cadence in the 80’s my speed jumped to 19 to 20 mph which moved my average speed to 14.6 mph. I held this until I stopped at the Circle K in Porter for ice and water. When I restarted it dropped to 14.5 mph and stayed there until I rode into Woodridge Forest and slowed for streets and wind.

My legs were tired by the time I got back into Kingwood and I finished the ride at 1:43 PM.

With a Saturday bike ride I will be over 200 miles for the 5th week in a row.