After missing my road mile goal for January it is encouraging that I’ve biked outdoors 5 days in a row including the first 2 days of February. Maybe February weather will be cooperative for more outside rides and reaching my 445 mile goal. I came up with a different route for today’s bike ride, Community Drive – Sorters Road – Forest Cove. No new streets just a different combination and direction on streets I ride. This route is a subset of Community Drive – Cumberland – Forest Cove. It was windy during today’s ride (more than yesterday). And my legs needed recovery time from almost 40 miles yesterday so I wanted to ride a shorter route. The bike ride didn’t turn out to be much shorter at 33.75 miles. Another reason was to check out the new location for Kingwood Bicycle on Hamblen Road. On the way back home I rode the San Jacinto Bayou Greenway to Marina Drive and then went to Hamblen Road. Riding around the center I didn’t see a sign for Kingwood Bicycle leading me to believe they aren’t there yet. I saw a comment on Strava a few days ago about the new location.
Because of the different street combination when I got to the Strava segment in elm Grove Village I was in the 35×15 gears and powered to 2nd fastest time on Kris Spraggins Memorial Route (2:16). This was mostly into the wind which surprised me a little.
The ride started at 11:06 AM with partly cloudy skies and a SE 12 mph wind. The 70 degrees let me wear a light long sleeve jersey under a wind jacket. For a number of miles this was comfortable but the clouds and wind increased making it feel cooler. Thankfully the last 4+ miles had a tailwind to help get to the 1:46 PM finish time.
During the ride the left shift lever wasn’t moving the rear cassette to a larger gear but would shift to a smaller gear. Sometimes I thought I was using the 1-9 gears but actually was in the 1-10 gears. No wonder it felt harder to pedal. The right shift lever seems to work fine. I will see if I can find the problem.
