Why pick the Florida 500 to ride. Well for one thing the route passes right past our house. In fact, the house is almost exactly halfway along the route and we will be able to use it as a rest stop during the race. Another good couple of reasons are, it’s very flat and the weather is great in February.
The route pretty much follows the coastline along route A1a the whole way. My only mountain climbs this ride are a few bridges on and off the barrier islands and along the Keys. So the challenges for me this time are more about the distance, time and possibly the wind. No, not my digestive functioning, the Florida coastal winds.
When cycling, the wind direction can make or break your ride. Headwinds suck; tailwinds are a joy. It might not seem a lot to have a light 5mph headwind but that can slow you down maybe by up to 3mph. So over 24 hours that’s 72 miles or around 4-5 hours extra riding time. Florida often has a coastal breeze of 4-15 mph during the day, so I am praying the forecasts I’ve seen for the race days are correct. A tailwind for most of the two days.
I would say the route has probably 3 different sections to it. The first half of the ride follows the relatively quiet coastal road from Jacksonville to around our house near Jupiter. Passing St Augustine, Daytona, Cape Canaveral (NASA) and Vero Beach along the way, this feels like an older more laid-back Florida to me. Laid back beaches, NASCAR Mecca, NASA rocket launch pad and lots of older winter snowbird towns. Development in Florida outside of Orlando tends to be, as far as I can see, along each coastline. As the population rises and property prices increase, the development has slowly moved north. South of Jupiter on the East Coast development has boomed, houses have got bigger and property prices have boomed. This section of the ride passes West Palm Beach, Boca, Ft Lauderdale and Miami. Hopefully I will be able to get past most of here before the weekend pleasure seekers get out and about. Past Miami we will head to Florida City and then the Keys. The Keys will be a challenge. One Hundred miles of exposed Islands and Bridges. Beautiful for sure, but after over 400 miles on a bike, a real challenge, I am sure.
You can follow us along during the race here if you have nothing better to do, want to see how we are doing or enjoy dot watching (warning it can be addictive). If you do, my dot will be towards, if not totally at the back of the race. There are some really great individual racers and fast teams entered, who will be truly racing. My goal is to just finish the race and I will be thrilled if we can do it in less than the allotted 50 hours.
I’m not really interested too much how I stack up against other cyclists, I didn’t start cycling until I was 55, I have an incurable lymphoma and to be honest, this is more about me competing against myself, the road, aging and health. I don’t really care how many cyclists can ride further, faster or better than me. However, I am going to give my all to take on life, in the race against time. Let’s see if my dot can beat the 50-hour challenge
