After not biking outdoors since December 10th the weather turned favorable today. I chose the “Kingwood – FM1485 – Kingwood” route to ride. I needed 27 miles to reach my 150 mile goal for December and this route was long enough to do it. I rode my Canyon Endurace out of the driveway at 11:02 AM to begin the ride. The weather was conducive with 66 degrees, partly cloudy sky and calm wind at the start. By the time I finished at 1:33 PM it warmed up to 71 degrees with the wind out of the SW at 8 mph.

Video equipment for today’s bike ride was my GoPro Hero 7 Silver in the hand held mode. With the pocket in my jacket it is easy to reach. The lanyard case helps too.

The ride covered 32.25 miles putting my total miles so far in December at 155.59, 5 miles over my goal. Year to date I biked 9,135 miles combining road miles and Zwift miles. Below is a summary my December activity versus my goals.

Biking outside has a much better feel to it than sweating away on the smart trainer indoors doing Zwift. Also my Sidi shoes are more roomy than the Shimano ones I wear when I Zwift. The Sidi shoes use a different cleat or I would wear than indoors to Zwift. While it was chilly (by my definition) at the beginning I was comfortable throughout the ride thanks to a good kit selection: shorts, leg warmers, long sleeve thermal jersey, windbreaker jacket, and half finger gloves.

I started the ride early enough to allow me to stop at Pat’s Donuts in Porter to buy an apple fritter. Since it was close to closing time the lady gave me an one for free. I waited until I finished the ride to eat one saving the other for tomorrow’s ride.

Power out during today’s ride was higher than my Zwift rides. Average speed too as I hit 14.5 mph around the 26 mile point but averaged 14.4 mph once I made the u-turn at Caney Creek and headed back to Kingwood. Strava told me today’s ride was harder than my usual rides but it didn’t seem that hard. Below is the overview of the bike ride created by Golden Cheetah followed by the ride summary data.

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