Effect of the wind on our Katy ride

Did our first full Katy ride his past week. As noted elsewhere, the wind can come from any direction in Missouri. We went East to West because of convenience, but others espouse going West to East for favorable winds. My observations were that you can't really plan a long ride based on the wind, because it will vary so much day-to-day. For quite a while, we were riding West with a steady 12 mph wind from the SW. So it was an offset headwind to us. In the open areas, it slowed us down to 7 mph. But in the trees, we were able to maintain a comfortable 10 mph. Since most of the Katy is tree-lined, the wind was not as much of a problem as we expected. The funny thing is, we met several groups coming the other way (with an offset tailwind) and they remarked how they thought the wind was blowing directly at them!

What was really interesting was riding along the bluffs from St. Charles to Rocheport. The wind hits the bluffs and spins in many directions. One minute it’s in your face, and the next it’s propelling you from behind.

On our final trek from Sedalia to Clinton, there were quite a few open areas, but the wind was coming out of the NE at 16mph. We enjoyed several miles of very easy riding. But those who chose to start West-East that day, and there were quite a few, faced a strong headwind.

It’s important to note that a doubling of wind speed means a quadrupling of wind resistance. In other words, it’s about 4 times as hard to pedal against a 12mph headwind as a 6mph headwind. So our lessons learned were: 1) to plan our ride as if it’s going to be all headwinds (and be happy when it’s not) and 2) if we do face a headwind, it is not worth the much higher effort to keep our speed up to a peak level. This was just our experience/opinion.

Hope this helps others.