Gainesville Cycling Festival!

It's that time of year again: our local bike club's annual 2-day Cycling Festival. Thursday night we helped stuff registration packets for the 590 or so cyclists who signed up to ride one or both days.

On Saturday, along with a small group of our Gainesville Cycling Club friends, we rode the Santa Fe Century, a 100-mile ride through scenic Alachua, Union, and Columbia counties. The proceeds benefit our local Boys and Girls Club. We started the day with a free pancake breakfast donated by IHOP. My feeling is, you can never have too many carbs before a ride. And never enough watermelon during a ride.

The Santa Fe route manages to avoid only 2 of the major hills of Alachua County. (Anyone who doesn't believe there are hills in Florida ought to come out next year and join us)! Saturday's weather was fickle. It started out overcast but warm. By mile 25 (High Springs), rain clouds were gathering. Between mile 25 and mile 50, light rain began to fall. Some of our group opted for hot coffee from a nearby convenience store rather than Gatorade once we reached the Myrtis rest stop.

The next 25 miles were damp and dreary, but at mile 75 (Worthington Springs) the sun came out again as we took a break under some live oak trees, looking skyward and watching the clouds zoom past.

We had a great ride at a comfortable pace (well, comfortable for all of us except Andrew, who kindly held back the speed for the benefit of us slowpokes). We averaged 16 m.p.h. for the entire ride, with a ride time of 6 hours, 15 minutes. Though Andrew has successfully ridden it many times (and much faster), I'm happy to have finished my first Santa Fe Century!

A photo of me at the last rest stop (Hague) before the finish: "we are HERE! Only 8 miles to go!"

Saturday night, after cycling 100 miles, we helped load trucks with supplies for Sunday's ride, the Horse Farm Hundred. I had signed up to ride a short 30-mile route, but it was so cold (47 degrees) and windy that I detoured onto the 25-mile route instead, so I could get back to Gainesville in time to help Andrew (a.k.a., "Crew Chief") serve hot dogs to our fellow cyclists as they finished the 55-mile and 100-mile Horse Farm rides. One hundred and twenty-five miles is plenty for one weekend.