I didn’t ride yesterday because I spent time with my niece but while I was off the bike two other cyclists were up to no good. They claimed my Strava Local Legends on two segments. Shame on them for taking advantage of me not riding.

With the day off I decided to ride a longer than normal route to make up for some of the missed miles. I chose my Stroker Road – Huffman route. The last time I rode the route on August 23rd I biked 43.88 miles so today I added a couple of streets in Kingwood and came in at 46.02 miles. I changed the streets in North Woodland Hills Village in the first 4 miles, made a short trip into River Grove off W. Lake Houston Parkway, and near the end I took different streets through Bear Branch Village. I don’t ride this route much as this was the 4th time this year. Now that the road construction on FM 2100 north of Stroker Road is nearing completion I can ride there more often. All 4 rides have been on the same bike, my Cervelo Caledonia.

I rode by several grass farms as you can see in the video. At Pinehurst Trail Drive at FM 1960 the video shows road construction action where I edged close to the main lanes of FM 1960 to get out of the way of the dump truck catching asphalt being ground up. The video shows the only cyclist I saw on the ride.

I waited for the temperature to warm up some before starting the ride at 10:19 AM. It was cooler than I prefer so I watched the Cro Race Stage 3 during the wait. The cool front dropped the humidity and dew point below our norms and the barometric pressure is higher than the norm. Lots of sunshine. I’m riding the Pineywoods Purgatory on Saturday in Lufkin and this cool weather will test my preference to bike in warmer weather. It warmed up to 80 by the time I finished at 1:52 PM. Weather summary: start 70 (humidity 41%, dew point 45), fair, wind E 9 mph; finish 80 (humidity 36%, dew point 51), fair, wind NE 8 mph. The wind was stronger than the numbers reflect. Riding north on FM 2100 for over 4 miles into a headwind required lots of leg power.

From the AXS.SRAM.com ride report and the cadence data from Stravini. Over 10,000 crank revolutions, the headwind on FM 2100 didn’t stop from using the 35×13 gears.