Pains, er, Paynes Prairie

We are lucky to have a fairly bike friendly city here in North Central Florida, as many roads have dedicated bike lanes. However, I still am not super comfortable biking on a street, even in the lanes. Just last week, a cyclist was killed at 11pm by a speeding driver.

Luckily, there are dedicated bike paths around town! One is the Archer to Gainesville path, which I normally walk or run. I am going to tackle it tomorrow, I think. The second path is from Gainesville to Hawthorne, running sixteen miles. The path starts in Gainesville in Boulware Springs park, and runs through and next to Paynes Prairie Preserve, a Florida State Park. There are other state and local conservation lands, but I haven't gotten that far! Just a note, it is so super dry here in NCF, that the cypress knees were in dry dirt instead of muck/swamp. I was sad for all the wildlife.

The September tri has a 15 mile cycling portion. I am so thankful Florida is the flattest state in the country! I haven't gotten a chance to scout out the area where the triathlon is being held, but I definitely will before the race on September 30. I really appreciate riding without cars, so Craig and I went for a ride this past Sunday morning while the kids were otherwise occupied. My first thought was to make it at least ten miles. It turns out that when I go all in, I go all in. We ended up riding 14.4 miles in 1:20. There were a couple of stops, because my tire was scraping my brake pad, there was a really tiny baby fawn sans mère on the side of the path, and we needed to catch our breath at the halfway mark. (I will admit to having paused the Runkeeper app during our breaks.) We ended up averaging 10.76 MPH. I was using my trusty beach bike (even though it has 18 gears) and Craig had his hybrid.

I'm hoping to average 15 MPH during the tri itself. I have no idea what normal, amateur triathletes average during the cycling portion. We had someone on a serious carbon-fiber (I'm assuming) bike with thin, fancy wheels zoom by us. There is a small hilly section on the trail, going uphill on the way back, and I felt like someone walking a brisk pace could have beat me up those tiny hillocks. (I can't even dignify those as hills!) I've decided to get Craig's road bike refurbished for the actual race. I figure training on my behemoth bike will make the road bike seem like a breeze.