I put on my route planning hat before today’s bike ride. Usually I ride to Huffman on Tuesday but with the closure of Atascocita Shores Drive at FM 1960 getting across Lake Houston was not possible. Recently I created a new route riding south to Balmoral and biking back to Kingwood but that route used Atascocita Shores Drive too. I decided to use that route and take the opportunity to see if the road construction started at Atascocita Shores and how much work has been done so far. The route name, “Atascocita – Balmoral – Walden”, will be the same but some of the streets will be different around the 25 mile point. You can see the road construction status in the video. It is supposed to be finished by April 27th.

I explain in the video why I’m seeing clearly.

Stage 2 of the Tour of the Alps was this morning and I watched it before eating breakfast because there was only 14 km left. Once it was over I did my morning exercises, ate breakfast and got ready for the bike ride. The temperature took awhile to get above 65 but when I started the ride at 10:45 it was 68. Lots of wind for the ride today. It increased after I rolled out on my Cervelo Caledonia bike. Since we don’t have any hills the wind punishes my legs like climbing. When I finished at 1:58 PM the wind was from the SE at 20 mph with 31 mph gusts. Getting to Balmoral wasn’t easy with most of the ride there into the headwind.

In the past I rode today’s route on Thursday. This was the 5th ride on the route this year. The effort was average compared to the other bike rides.

The AXS.SRAM.com ride report shows 39 RD shifts or 1.14 shifts per mile. With the strong wind I didn’t expect that the 35×13 gearing would be predominate with 1:26:34 riding time out the total 3:05:15. The distance in the 35×13 was 21.3 miles out a total 34.2 miles. I spent 42:44 in 35×15 and 44:28 in 35×17 gears.

The GoPro camera froze at least 2 times. Not sure what causes it to freeze. I thought heat might be the problem but it was only in the 70’s during the ride. Maybe the microSD card? The mount held its position after I tightened the screws.

Weather conditions: start 67 (humidity 62%, dew point 54), partly cloudy, wind E 14 mph; finish 75 (humidity 57%, dew point 58), mostly cloudy, wind SE 20 mph gusts 31 mph.

A Strava top result with 2nd fastest time on Northbound Sprint (1:41). That came riding north on Timber Forest from Madera Run Parkway.