Before starting today’s bike ride I overloaded on bike races from Europe. I watched Paris – Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico hoping the finishes would not happen at the same time. Fortunately they were a few minutes apart and I saw each. I think it is unusual to have the leader of each race be from the same team and won today’s stage. With that out of the way I got ready for today’s bike ride on my “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route. I wasn’t sure about the Huffman part but I rode north on the new unopened FM 2100 to see how far it went. As I kept riding I got within a couple hundred yards of the railroad crossing at FM 1960 in Huffman. I walked my Lynskey R300 through some rebar to the shoulder of FM 2100 and continued to FM 1960. The last time I rode this route was January 26th, 2021. There was an electronic sign alerting traffic that FM 2100 at FM 1960 will be closed March 19th through March 23rd. I suspect the construction will be busy pouring concrete there. The video contains clips of the construction area. This was the 4th time biking this route in 2021.

At the 11:33 AM start I checked the weather app for conditions at Bush IAH and the wind was 9 mph but not long after that it was obvious the wind picked up. All the way to FM 2100 and Old Atascocita Road I battled the headwind. At the 2:10 PM finish I checked again and understood the strength of the headwind, from the south at 20 mph with 28 mph gusts. I took a gamble on the temperature forecast and wore shorts, a new long sleeve jersey, and short sleeve jersey over it. The forecast said 80 degrees but it didn’t get there while I was biking. Weather as I biked: start 74 (71% humidity, 63.9 dew point), overcast, wind S 9 mph; finish 73 (74% humidity, 64.6 dew point), mostly cloudy, wind S 20 mph gusts 28 mph. March is a windy month and it is showing it.

I biked 33.14 miles which moved my week total to 102.76 miles and the month to 306.74 miles. Road miles for March total 229 with a 600 mile goal. The other miles are on Zwift.

Fighting the wind shows in the power zone data from Golden Cheetah. On the way back to Kingwood the tailwind generally helped though riding west over Lake Houston still meant both hands on the bars to counter the gusts pushing my front wheel. I felt good riding my Lynskey R300 today even with the wind. Legs were putting out the power. Last week my butt was sore after riding the Lynskey and I was concerned the Koobi saddle might be the problem but that ride was after riding on Zwift using my Blue Norcross AL bike and a hard Prologic saddle. I think the Zwift riding was the cause.