Strava details below: May 8 - Fort Caroline area of Jacksonville, Florida May 9 - Arlington and Fort Caroline areas of Jacksonville, Florida May 10 - Coastal areas from Mayport Ferry (Ft. George Island) N to Fernandina Beach, Florida Unlike the previous weekend, the last several days produced summer-like conditions around NE Florida, with temps up to the upper 80's F and bright sunshine (well, today & yesterday were a bit hazy) - nothing but great, not-too-hot weather for riding. The first two rides were late-afternoon (after-work) rides near/around my home-neighborhoods (starting & finishing at Ed Austin Park next to Hidden Hills - my house is 'blocked' by Strava so that results are not posted online if the ride starts or finishes at my house - a nice, configurable privacy-setting of theirs). The areas adjacent to Fort Caroline are quite bumpy in paces with short, rolling hills (some are quite steep with gradients in excess of 10% - the steepest is Pleasant Hill Drive, a dead-end road that climbs up a fairly large hill with the cul-de-sac at the summit: the average gradient is 11% but peaks at nearly 20% near the top!). A rider who recorded his effort on Strava 2 years ago has the "KOM" (best time overall in Strava for that segment, KOM = "king of the mountain") where he averaged over 21 MPH up that hill - incredible! - but this was probably some young, race-trained, skinny dude on an super-light-weight, high-end carbon bike. My best time - actually, I hit it on the May 8 ride - by comparison was avg. 13 MPH on my old alum/carbon Javelin. And it really kicked my ass!!!! The Saturday ride was up along the coast from Ft. George Island N to Fernandina Beach, starting & finishing at Big Talbot Island. There was a string wind from the southeast that made parts of that ride difficult with the headwind (and crosswinds going over the Amelia Island Bridge), but once the wind was at your back it was zoom-zoom-zoom! Comments are closed.
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