This is the ride I love to have problems on. Last year I made a wrong turn on the 55 mile route and ended riding less than 55 miles. This year I looked at the map and memorized the street names where I missed the turn last year. I thought I would be prepared. We gathered at the Humble ISD Career and Technical Education Center to begin the ride. We rolled out early at 7:59AM. The weather was chilly but I dressed for it with leg warmers, shorts, 2 long sleeve jerseys, windbreaker jacket and full finger gloves. The weather at the start looked like this.
Friday night the Garmin Connect app updated on my Nexus 6P phone but just before starting to ride I turned on my Edge 520 and the phone connected and everything seemed to be working. As we rode along the route I got a hone disconnected message on the 520 but the miles continued to increase making me think the phone reconnected. As I rode across Lake Houston on FM1960 at the 9.43 mile point another phone disconnected message appeared. This time the miles froze at 9.43. I kept riding hoping the phone would reconnect and the 520 would update the ride. No such luck. At the second rest stop I pulled over and worked on getting the 520 and my phone to talk. I powered off my phone and the 520 saving the ride. Then when they powered back up I worked on getting the Bluetooth pair. Finally they did and I resumed the ride. I missed about 3.8 miles of data with no way to get it. My route looked like I flew from the 9.43 mile point to the rest stop. From then on I expected the 520 and phone to break up again but they didn’t. I should have know a problem would happen when the app updated the night before the ride. I don’t know how I could have tested it though.
After that I followed the 55 mile route signs but several were laying on the ground. The wind wasn’t particularly strong so maybe they didn’t put them in the ground far enough. We haven’t had much rain so the ground is hard in many places. I would hope they paint arrows on the road surface. It looked like I was on the route because I saw the 55 mile route signs occasionally. Someplace though I missed one and got on the 44 mile route near Crosby. I think I was supposed to go under US90 but there wasn’t a 55 mile route sign at the intersection, only a 44 mile one. Once I made the turn I could have tried to get back on the route in Crosby at FM2100 and US90 but the traffic was heavy so I stayed on the 44 mile route. At FM2100 and US90 there was a rest stop but I decided not to stop and catch the next one.
As I was riding I calculated the anticipated miles I would ride. I guess about 47 miles. Using RideWithGPS.com to create the missing section of the route showed 3.8 miles as the lost portion. This made my 47 mile guess pretty close with a 46.8 mile total in RideWithGPS.com. I was able to combine the two “rides” in the SportTracks program and calculate the missing 5.57 miles for a total of 48.53 miles .
I took a break at the last rest stop to eat a couple of chewy granola bars, drink Gatorade (my least favorite lemon-lime) and visit the restroom. From there I rode to the finish only stopping for traffic lights.
Throughout the ride the wind presented challenges. It was from the ENE and felt very chilly. Yesterday the high was 81 but during the night a cool front moved through and dropped the temperature to 54Â and the wind got cold. After getting to Crosby the wind mostly was from the side or back and this helped me to pick up my speed. It was painful to watch my 15.9 mph average speed drop when the 520 froze at 9.43 miles but the riding time kept increasing. When I got the 520 and phone talking again the average speed built up to 15.9 and then to 16.2 mph before I hit a section with some headwind. I ended up averaging 16.2 mph over the 33.59 miles from rest stop 2 to the finish.
With today’s ride I am at 149 miles for February. My goal is 346 miles leaving 197 to go.
I arrived back at the Jeep at 11:32. The weather had warmed up and the overcast sky changed from overcast to partly cloudy. The weather screenshot while I was driving home (I forgot to take one before loading my bike in the Jeep).
Pictures from the ride. Click the image to enlarge it.
