Day 58 was a virtually windless day.  Let me repeat that for those of you who might not appreciate the significance of that.  Today was virtually a windless day.  The significance of that is I rode through mildly rolling hills mostly in high gear at over 13 mph for the first 25 miles.  Then I entered the town of Bastrop.  I was slowed by traffic and traffic lights, but in a short way I looked forward to entering Bastrop State Park.

I was excited to ride in a park with few cars, and slow speed limits.  Ha!  Here is where The good folks from Adventure Cycling played a sadistic prank on me.  There were few cars and the speed limits were slow.  The road surface was fair, but that was not the prank.  Finally just when the terrain was getting flat after riding through the Texas hill country, I encountered the steepest hills of the trip.

The hills were short, but my GPS measured some of them at over 15% grade.  I have to confess I was unable to make it to the top of at least 4 of them.  All told I must have had to walk about 200 meters total.  I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for not pedaling every   foot of the route.

At 36 miles in I wasn’t sure how much further I could go until I ran into the following section.  There was a serpentine section of Buesher State Park that was just plain fun to boggy through.  Switch backs without the hills riding in high gear 12 to 15 mph.

For those of you following along to the calorie counts, I just want to let you know how I dealt with my 1400 calorie deficit yesterday.  From breakfast to bedtime.  Large bowl of raisin bran, banana, apple, 6 peanut crackers, two peanut butter sandwiches, two handfuls of trail mix, 6 Oreo cookies, 1 quart of Gator Aid, 10 oz of chick thighs, half a plate of broccoli, 3 beers, and for desert I had a 10″ sausage and mushroom pizza.  I think I started today in the black.

Stats for day 58: Rode 45.77 miles at 11.3  mph, Max=17.2 mph, Ascent=2252′, Descent=2399′, Max elevation=611′, Min elevation=282′, Ave heart rate=125, Max heart rate=178, Ave temp=75 degrees and humid.  Calories burned 1350