Last night I started thinking about what route to take on today’s ride. I also looked on YouTube about using time lapse video on my GoPro camera. The route I came up with appears to be a combination of roads not biked before. Searching my ride history in SportTracks I found a route similar to the one I biked today but nothing matching. The route I biked went north, northwest, south, and southeast. I labeled it “FM1485 – Old Houston Rd – FM1314”. The similar route was “SH242 – Old Houston Rd – FM1314”. Since it was new I wasn’t sure about the mileage but guessed close to the 41.41 miles it turned out to cover (I guessed 42 miles in the video).

Starting a little later than I wanted, my Canyon Endurace bike and I rolled away at 11:26 AM and finished at 2:42 PM. A fitting time since a piece of the ride traveled on SH 242. The 41.41 miles accomplished several things: put me within reach of another 200 mile week at 175.28 miles, put me over my 360 mile goal for November with 378.84 miles, and improved my year to date miles to 8,555. The month’s goal recap is below.

My time lapse video effort didn’t turn out as good. I forgot that the default action for the Hero 7 Black when I push the record button is regular video. When I pushed the record button at 2 miles into the ride I didn’t add any voice because time lapse doesn’t record audio. But the camera recorded the ambient noise, kind of. I realized this when I reached New Caney, stopping to switch the GoPro to regular video and looked at the video recorded up to that point. I planned on recording video, not time lapse, on the portion of the route beginning in New Caney until I rode to Gene Campbell Blvd. at FM 1314. That portion went as planned. I stopped at the Valero station on FM 1314 at Sorters Road to eat a Clif Bar and changed the GoPro default to time lapse but it didn’t work. I need more practice on the settings. I fixed the time lapse when I edited the video and reduced the size of the file by about 30 minutes.

The weather changed during the ride. At the start the sun was out but clouds moved in and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees. I dressed for low to mid 80’s wearing shorts, arm sleeves, and short sleeve jersey, no long sleeve jersey for the first time in over a week. The wind picked up too but I stayed comfortable, probably from the energy pedaling into the headwind on FM 1314. What the weather looked like: start 79 (73% humidity, 70.1 dew point), overcast, wind E 8 mph; finish 78 (70% humidity, 67.5 dew point), overcast, wind SE 13 mph.

I surprised myself by getting my average speed up to 15.0 mph and holding it there from Old Houston Road until I stopped at the Valero station when it fell to 14.9 mph and stayed there until I entered Kingwood. Strava reported that the ride was harder than my usual efforts. Looking at the bike ride data summary from Golden Cheetah my power in zones 3 to 7 totaled 52% of the 2:52:18 riding time. Breaking that down for zones 6 and 7 the time was 13%, higher than recent bike rides. From that I see why Strava called this hard.

One concern I had on the route was construction on SH 242 between FM 1485 and Old Houston Road. I was prepared to ride on FM 1485 to turn on Old Houston Road at the FM 3083 split but when I got to SH 242 no construction though signs of coming work lay on the right of way parallel to the westbound shoulder I rode on. East of FM 1485 I saw signs of construction work. West of Old Houston Road construction nears completion.

November biking goal recap.

Background music in the video: Signal to Noise by Scott Buckley. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.