It seems each year we pick a theme, something to get our rides organized around. A few years back, it was the 20 x 200 km in 2020 rides. That year I also just reached 10,000 km with a final 200 km ride on New Year’s Eve! 2023 started without a theme. Somehow I thought about doing 200 mile rides (as opposed to 200 km). But doing 20 of those in one year would be too much for me…
Early on I had a two very long rides: One starting the year on Jan-2 with a bang (full moon, 200 mile loop touching Lake Okeechobee and Atlantic Coast), the other one the Miami 2 Naples 2 Juno ride from the Atlantic over to the Gulf Coast and back in a single long day on Feb-2nd. It was a great start to a year of long rides.
I had long favored loop rides over out & back routes since there would be more scenery to experience on a loop. There are only so many loops you can ride starting from home. This year I became a bit more adventurous in expanding the “search radius” for new routes, including an up to 2 hour approach drive by car. Preferably these routes would also be loops and have stretches along the coast (Atlantic, Gulf, Lake Okeechobee). I looked at the South Florida Google map many times stringing together routes for distances and using Google street view for whether a road had a decent shoulder or none. This formed a small collection of viable routes, from which to choose based primarily on weather (temperature and wind).
In terms of ideal weather, I was looking for shifting winds where you can get tailwind on more than just one leg of the loop. An ideal case of this was back in May 2020 when I had tailwind assistance on 3 sides of a rectangular course from Coast 2 Coast with wind shifting from E to S to W. It turns out this weather pattern is not all that rare in South Florida spring and summer; with the landmass cooling faster at night and heating faster during the day than the surrounding bodies of water, a thermal convergence leads to off-shore winds at night, followed by a turn to on-shore winds during the day. This means you can start pre-dawn in the center of Florida heading to the Coast, then ride up (or down) the Coast for a bit, and finally returning by afternoon back to the center of the state with the on-shore tailwind. I ended up with 3 such loops towards the West Coast, all of which had beautiful scenery, decent tailwind and greatly expanded my cycling horizons:
The last of the above rides was one of the highlights not just of this year, but of all my rides. The route was starting from Zolfo Springs in the center of the Florida peninsula, heading SW to Punta Gorda, then around the Charlotte Sound down to the Southern tip of Gasparilla State Park, then up NW along the coast to Sarasota and further up to Bradenton Beach, then going due East all the way back to Zolfo Springs.
Early June there is maximal daylight in South Florida of around 14+ hours, and I spent about 3 hours before in the dark (with nearly full moon) and maybe 1 dark hour at the end again to close the 340km loop. As mentioned above, there were favorable winds, especially pre-dawn off-shore breeze on the first leg down SW, and the afternoon on-shore breeze coming back East from Bradenton Beach. You can see this in the above map where the colors indicate speed (red = higher, blue = slower), with 25km laps indicated.
Another reason this ride is very memorable to me is that it was the first ride I did as a grandfather – my daughter had just given birth to a baby-boy a few days prior to that date. We had a nice phone conversation while I was at a refueling stop at a Publix in Englewood.
The impressions of a long ride like this are very varied. They range from riding in the dark of night under the full moon, quietly gliding between the little towns under the starry sky, to the warmth of the early morning sunlight with beautiful colors, to the Key West like feel of Gasparillo State Park and its white sand beaches, to the extreme afternoon heat (95F) near Sarasota, to the busy beach traffic on Longboat Key, to the busy rush-hour streets in Bradenton, and chasing your own long shadow going back East on Hwy 64 towards the center of the state back to dusk and dark near Zolfo Springs. I took about 250 photos on this ride, a bit more than 1 / mile. Even years later, those photos help remember the many impressions of such a long day. Uploading the Garmin recorded data onto GarminConnect and Strava also helps keep track as well as share with friends.
I thought about doing one long ride per month, ideally around full moon to make the inevitable nighttime riding more pleasant. While I didn’t quite complete 12 of those 200 milers, I ended up with an average of just over 204 miles for every ride this year on my Colnago Ovalmaster Titanium bike – the vintage 2002 bike still has lots of miles and adventure in it! One of the 12 long rides was shorter and hillier in Austria’s Salzkammergut region on a MountainBike. This dropped the overall average down to just under 200 miles (318 km), but its 7 lakes and various mountain passes made for a spectacular setting for that loop ride.
There were 2 months without a long ride. Most of April I spent in Argentina (Jill and I visited Patagonia and I added a work week with our SW developer team near Buenos Aires). It was a great trip, but without any cycling. I also injured my right knee during a hike, which slowed me down a bit after coming back. In November the weather was fairly rainy and windy, certainly not good for any extended riding, much less at night.
I have been tracking my rides with the Garmin Edge cycling computer and uploaded to Strava for the last 4 years. One useful tool on the Strava website is the heat map showing your routes and frequency. Here is my cycling heat map 2020 – 2023:
Each orange dot marks the start of a ride. When multiple rides started in close proximity, a cluster is formed with the number of rides. Of course, most rides (240) start right at (or close to) home in Juno Beach. Other clusters of note are the Miami and Fort Lauderdale TriRail stations (5 rides each). Most of those are tailwind rides up or down A1A with S or N wind, letting the train do the upwind leg of the round-trip. A few exceptions are long rides from Miami, either down and back to the Florida Keys or the Coast to Coast ride via Naples.
In reasonably close driving distance (<= 1 hour drive time) to home are Port Mayaca on the East end of Lake Okeechobee (7 rides) and Stuart Sandsprit Park (6).
Beyond the East end of Lake O adds more significant drive time. This year I added several such rides, including the loops LaBelle 2 Marco Island, Sebring 2 Sarasota and Zolfo Springs 2 Punta Gorda 2 Bradenton – all 200+ mile loop rides with beautiful long stretches along the Gulf Coast. Much of these I had not seen before from the bicycle. While adding 2 hours of drive time each way before and after a long bike ride is a lot of extra time and effort, those trips are real highlights and they are still doable in one very long day (without hotel room stay).
Also noteworthy are the 3 rides from Jacksonville down South along the Atlantic Coast. 2 of them starting in Jacksonville Beach, one even further North riding home from the Georgia border. With the initial such ride in 2018 (before using Strava) I have now done this stretch four times – each time using Amtrak train to get up North and then enjoying strong North tailwind support during the entire 275 mile ride. This route has become somewhat familiar to me. While still a good adventure, I no longer consider it as crazy as on the first attempt back in 2018.
There is also one organized group ride in the mix: The 200 mile Sea-2-Key ride starting near Daytona Beach heading West to Cedar Key from 2021, marking the Northwestern-most point I cycled in Florida. I should add one of the organized Mt. Dora rides again to this collection.
And there are still a few routes I’d like to complete and fill out my Florida heat map. Top among those is my desire to ride home from Key West to Juno Beach, which is about 400 km (250 miles) and certainly doable with the right wind. (Logistics however are daunting.) Perhaps a first in 2024?
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