I wanted another 40+ mile ride today and vacillated between two routes, Kingwood – Hare Cook Road – Kingwood (about 45 miles) and New Caney – Roman Forest – Valley Ranch (about 43 miles). I chose the latter but made a few changes to the streets to increase the mileage a little. I thought the changes would get the distance closer to 45 miles and ended up biking 44.77 miles. I’m still trying to recoup the lost miles from not riding Wednesday. With today’s ride the week is at 149.24 and the month at 379.92. I passed the halfway point to my 750 mile goal and increased my cushion on the pace to 15.7 days versus the 12th day of the month, a 3.7 day buffer.

It was a big mountain stage for the Giro d’Italia and I paused the race at 41km to the finish after eating breakfast. After getting dressed for the ride I wheeled the Cervelo Caledonia out and pressed start at 9:20 AM. The weather is starting to act like May with the temperature at 81 degrees at the beginning. The 12 mph south wind helped me get to Tavola but was menacing as I rode east into Roman Forest. The trees and winding streets kept the wind effect down until I biked back to US59 to ride south. I expected more headwind than I perceived riding parallel to US59 probably from the passing traffic on the freeway and frontage road. Valley Ranch Parkway had the most wind exposure with not much to break the wind. I stopped at the TX 99 overpass to eat a couple of granola bars and rest a little. The breeze in the shade felt good. I finished the bike ride at 1:09 PM.

Weather for today’s bike ride: Start 81 degrees, humidity 77%, dew point 73, overcast, wind S 12 mph; Finish 87 degrees, humidity 69%, dew point 76, mostly cloudy, wind S 12 mph. It looks like the long sleeve jerseys aren’t going to be needed for awhile.

A summary of recent rides on this route. Today’s was the 2nd longest and the average is around 42 to 43 miles. All but one ride has been on my Cervelo bike.

Below is the RWGPS map for today and the ride last month to compare the route differences. The big change today was adding the loop through Brooklyn Trails at the 8 mile point. I thought that would add more distance than it did.

Five starred Strava segments on the ride today. I contested 2 but no results.