Earliest bike ride start in a couple of weeks with wheels rolling at 7:55 AM and finishing at 10:31 AM. That may have contributed to not seeing as many other cyclists as I sometimes see when biking my “Atascocita – Huffman – Walden” route. I saw several but they were spread along the ride with no groups. With sunrise coming later the group rides probably are not starting quite as early as they did. I managed to include most of the cyclists in the video but a few escaped the lens of the GoPro. Speaking of the GoPro, it froze once during the ride just when I passed another cyclist. I still haven’t figured out why it does this. Some rides it doesn’t happen and other rides it happens once or twice. I thought it might be the heat but it wasn’t that hot today when it froze. Fortunately I found a way to get it working again, press the power button for 10 to 15 seconds and it comes back to life. I use the GoPro Quick Capture when the problem happens. This helps the battery last longer and shortens my video editing time.

Before the ride began my week total was 180.97 miles and the ride today came in at 32.89 miles improving my week to 213.87 miles and July to 995.96 miles. I plan on biking tomorrow which should make July a 1,000+ mile month, the second one this year. So far I’ve biked this route 16 times and the distance has varied from 32 to 34 miles. Pretty consistent considering I like to vary the streets from time to time. I did that today during the first mile, riding through Bear Branch Village in Kingwood, and going on Sunny Shores Drive and Rebawood Drive on the way to FM 1960 in Atascocita. I didn’t ride very far east of FM 2100 like I do on some rides. The route profile is flat with a few inclines in Atascocita, one on Sunny Shores goes up slowly over a half mile.

While the temperature wasn’t yet to 80 degrees when I started the humidity was a muggy 95% offsetting the lower temperature. The airport weather station report no wind but I think there was a light breeze early in the ride. Later on the way back across Lake Houston I used the 35×15 gears because I could go faster with less effort than using the 35×13 gears. Biking north seemed to have the most favorable wind. What the weather looked like: start 79 (humidity 95%, dew point 77), partly cloudy, wind N 0 mph; finish 88 (humidity 67%, dew point 75), mostly cloudy, wind SW 8 mph. The dew point is important too for the weather feel and the ability of my bike kit to offload sweat to keep me cool.

It took awhile to get my overall average speed to 13 mph and above because this route has so many stops and starts. Long uninterrupted road is needed for me to get my speed up and improve the average speed. My AXS.SRAM ride report shows 2:29:08 overall moving time, 1:11:16 using the 35×13 gears and 56:18 pedaling 35×15 gears. I find the pedaling time interesting and today it was 1:41:52 according to Strava. That was 6976 crank revolutions. My legs felt strong except for the ride west over Lake Houston into the headwind. Sometimes I get frustrated with the Favero pedals and clipping back in. They are not as easy as the Shimano Ultegra pedals. This might be enough reason to switch to a crankset power meter with the Ultegra pedals when the Favero ones reach the end of their life. Favero offers a conversion kit for Shimano pedals but the Q factor increases a lot.