Giro d’Italia Delays My Ride – May 5th Bicycle Ride
I delayed the start of today’s ride because I wanted to be sure my DVR recorded the Giro d’Italia stage 1. In years past my options to watch this race disappeared. Last year our local channel 39.3 carried Universal Sports Network but they dropped it earlier this year. So this morning I searched Dish Network to see if the Italian channel RAI was stilled offered as part of the International Italian package. It was so I went to the program guide on my receiver to see if the Giro showed up at the 10:30 AM start time. I did not see it but I did notice a couple of channels down (USN 9795, also channel 402) a cycling program. Clicking on information pulled up the Giro d’Italia. I programed the time and waited to see if it was true before setting off on my Saturday ride. Searching Google it appears that USN arrived on Dish sometime in February. This surprised me because in the past when I searched the Universal Sports Network website for carriers Dish was not listed. Now I can watch each day without streaming it over my internet connection.
Today’s route is a little different with a section biked backwards from my normal direction. The roads are familiar going my usual direction but not so when I reverse it due to my not paying attention to street names. I know the turns but not most of the names. So when I turned south onto FM2100 from Old Atascocita Road the next turn to the left onto Stroker Road would be reversed and I would have to watch closely to not make a wrong turn. While I was not sure of the road name to turn onto it became obvious as I neared it since the road was on my left and it was the first one from FM2100. From there on the reverse route looked different but not a problem.
With the later start (10:46 AM) the temperature ranged moved upward to 85 to 90 during the ride. Humidity did not let up much either: 65% going down to 52% at the finish. Scattered clouds made it warm but the SSE 10 mph wind (17 mph gusts) helped some. Even with the late start I saw some other bikers on the causeway over Lake Houston and Fairlake Drive. After that they disappeared.
The route today ended up at 36.75 miles for the second day in a row of 35 miles or more. My average speed landed at 15.7 mph even with the wind gusts. I think the deciding factor came when I rode the reverse section of the route with several stretches of nice tailwinds. I also noticed the southbound shoulder of FM2100 from Old Atascocita Road to Stroker Road is much cleaner than the northbound side. So the week’s total miles stand at 195.84 at an average speed of 15.5 mph versus last week’s 14.9 mph. May miles now total 165.66 and year to date I am up to 2101.33 miles. These figures come SportTracks since none of the three agree on the same numbers. No biking tomorrow since I have a meeting at church and need a day rest.
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Alternate route and data view at RideWithGPS.com