With a before 9 AM start and a shorter route I finished the bike ride at 11:17 AM. This proved I can actually start a weekday bike ride before 9 AM. With 151 miles for the week I decided to ride around 31 miles today to position me for a 200 mile week on tomorrow’s bike ride. I biked 31.62 miles riding my “Kingwood – FM 1485 – Kingwood” route but I changed a number of streets, adding some and changing the direction on some others. Biking the route 7 times so far this year today’s distance was a little below the average distance but with the changes I made in the route I wasn’t sure what distance would be.

I saw two other cyclists and they were in spots I don’t see them in, the first was at E. Knox Street and the other was on Stonehollow Drive.

The route goes north along US59 and makes a u-turn under US59 on the north side of Caney Creek. I changed the route early on in North Woodland Hills on Oak Shores Drive going on a section I don’t ride very often. Then I went on Hidden Pines Drive north across Northpark into Woodridge Forest on Woodridge Parkway. I was back on streets I use weekly until I came to Auburn Cabin Drive which I rode for the first time among all of the construction workers’ trucks building homes. Back on my usual streets the next change was in Porter taking FM 1314 east to Loop 494. North on 494 to TX 99 is was on a rarely biked road and entirely new was taking the west frontage road beside TX 99 to US59. Antique Lane was the next street I haven’t been on for a long time. This took me to Loop 494 again. From that point it was back on the regular route until I turned left into Auburn Trails from Briar Berry Lane to get to US59. This was the opposite direction I usually take through Auburn Trails.

Getting to Caney Creek was into a light headwind which turned into a tailwind for most of the ride back to Kingwood. The temperature continued to be lower than earlier in the week but humidity was higher. Weather summary: start 79 (humidity 88%, dew point 75), partly cloudy, wind NE 6 mph; finish 89 (humidity 65%, dew point 76), partly cloudy, wind N 6 mph.

Gearing on my Lynskey Helix bike is different from my Cervelo Caledonia with a 46×33 versus the Cervelo’s 48×35 crankset. The rear cassette is the same 36×10 on both. The AXS.SRAM ride report today points out that I rode the 33×13 gears for 1:42:28 (24.1 miles) of the total moving time of 2:21:22. The easier 46×33 allows me to push the pedals into the headwind without going to the 33×15. With the tailwind I should’ve changed to the 33×12 but I didn’t think of that.