Before today’s bike ride began I watched the finish of the Giro d’Italia Donne and up to the final 43 km of stage 6 of the Tour de France (I watched the final 43k after the ride). I suppose I could’ve started the bike ride earlier if I had waited to watch the TdF. I ate breakfast while watching and then got ready. Thinking of which route to ride since it was Thursday I decided to go on my “Atascocita – Balmoral – Walden” ride to the south. I can check the railroad overpass construction on Timber Forest and road construction on FM 1960 at Atascocita Shores.

I saw the Balmoral Lagoon for the first time, it’s in the video. Impressive blue water.

I rode my Cervelo Caledonia and started the ride at 9:24 AM, the same as yesterday but I finished a little earlier at 12:18 PM. I took some side streets north of Upper Lake Drive for the first time to add a little more distance and finished after biking 35.38 miles. This bumped my week total to 142.41 miles and July to 228.18 miles on my way to the 800 mile goal for July. Of the 8 times I biked this route in 2022 today was the next to longest distance just missing the longer June 23rd ride.

When I started my legs didn’t feel that strong and I stayed in the 35×15 gearing most of the way to Balmoral because of a light headwind. On the ride back I shifted to 35×13 a lot changing back to the 35×15 when my legs felt heavy. I was surprised to Strava tell me this ride was harder than my usual efforts. Total moving time was 2:47:43 according to the AXS.SRAM.com ride report. I used the 35×15 gears for 1:26:34 and the 35×13 for 57:23 which is what I expected. I pedaled 7,143 revolutions in 1:47:55 leaving about an hour of coasting. A nice down hill coast was from near the top of the railroad overpass construction with some tailwind assist.

I passed several other cyclists during the ride.