I was listening to Mike Rowe’s The Way I Heard It podcast yesterday and they mentioned a famous author who said you should never start a story with the weather. So I won’t do that. Before today’s bike ride I had an appointment with my dentist which went smoothly and I was back home in time to start today’s bike ride at 9:27 AM. Since it is Wednesday I rode my Lynskey Helix bike and I decided to ride my New Caney – Roman Forest Blvd. – Valley Ranch route. This includes many streets and roads from other routes, this is just a different combination. Loop 494 has construction at FM 1485 in New Caney and I avoided that area. During 2022 I’ve biked this route 6 times averaging 32 to 33 miles per ride and today I rode 33.96 miles. The longest ride was 34.49 miles on May 25th. I’m getting close to my 720 mile goal for the month lacking just 5 miles. For the week I’m up to 110 miles. A 200+ mile week looks possible.

Today was the first time riding the Lynskey Helix on this route. The previous rides have been on my Cervelo Caledonia.

I saw Ronnie Clark as we passed each other on Briar Berry Lane (in the video). Other “casual” cyclists were out riding too.

Now for the weather. As you can see in the video, the sky was blue with a few scattered clouds. The wind was light allowing me to pedal hard and get some speed. I built my overall average speed up to 14.5 mph on the way back to Kingwood and held it for several miles. Humidity was a decent 56% when I finished at 12:10 PM with the temperature at 90. According to Space City Weather the next six days will be hot and dry, temperatures could reach 100 in some places. Weather summary for the ride: start 81 (humidity 81%, dew point 74), mostly clear, wind N 5 mph; finish 90 (humidity 56%, dew point 73), mostly clear, wind NE 6 mph. Starting later Monday a front might arrive lowering the daytime temperature.

I’m including my cadence data from the ride because it intrigues me. Out of a total moving time of 2:23:41 I pedaled 1:50:41 with 7745 crank revolutions. Pedaling can be so automatic that I don’t think about how much I do.

I made a point to to shift from the 35×13 gears to 35×15 gears for stops. I missed a couple which made starting to move hard. The AXS.SRAM ride report shows 27 RD changes. I used the 35×13 gears 1:37:24 (24.7 miles) and the 35×15 gears 41:22 (5.2 miles).