After riding alongside my wife for nearly four-miles while she ran, the real fun began when I left the barn with Ron and Doug on our speedy road bikes. Real fun as in, real fast!
Not two miles into our smallish group ride, Rossana hooked up with us at Hiatus Road and Sheridan Street. And then two blocks later, some guy from the Weston Flyers joined our group of four, making it now a group of five. There is strength in numbers, or more to the point, we had become more visible to the general motoring public. That’s a good thing!
Leading us westward on Stirling Road was Rossana and the Flyer gentleman, often pulling our pace line slightly over 20 mph into the WSW wind. So far I had no problem keeping up with the fast-moving group.
We then crossed over I-75 via the Stirling Road Bridge, turned north of 166th Avenue, and then westward again, but this time on busy Griffin Road. Griffin Road runs along a gator infested canal that leads out into the Florida Everglades. No gators were sighted today, only a dead possum lying in the middle of our bike lane.
After cruising through Weston, we then headed east on St. Rd. 84 at speeds up to 25 mph. That’s when my heart rate hit its max at 156 bpm. That’s when I let three of them go ahead for the next mile or so until we regrouped at a traffic signal.
We finally arrived at the coffee shoppe for a much needed breather. No coffee today, just peanut-crackers and H2O. Amongst other interesting topics, we talked about healthy diets and dietary life styles. Thankfully, no one brought up the topic that’s been haunting our American populace for weeks, national politics.
We then took our beloved Bonaventure route back to the barn at a slightly slower pace. You couldn’t tell that we rode slower based on my heart rate, but that was because the heat index had increased 10 to 15 degrees since the beginning of our ride.
Average group pace was 16.7 mph.
Oh, for the first time ever, I mounted my Contour Roam Video camera on my handle bars instead of on top my bike helmet. Later today I’ll upload and edit this morning’s ride for all of you to view.
Nice ride with good people, and the average temp was only 83 degrees. I’ll take it!
This was one hot walk, not in regards to our speed but in reference to the temperature. Even though we began our walk just past eight o’clock in the morning, the average temperature was 84F with full sun and high humidity. 
Our overall pace was exactly what I was aiming for. Far from our top walking speed, but not too fast that it would stress out an already damaged knee. The good news is, I have no discomfort whatsoever in the knee. But 3 ½ miles is far from 13.1 miles, so we will see how it goes from now until January’s Disney World running events. 
