Cycling Flagler 2017 – Shawn’s story

This was my first time riding Cycle Flagler. I’ve heard about it from my teammates and I was very eager to do the ride for myself. I and my family came up the day before and spent a really fun day in St. Augustine first, capped off by a nighttime Ghost & Gravestones tour after which we retired to a hotel that was just about a mile away from the Flagler airport. I arrived early, got registered and then hung around until I saw the team jersey of one of my teammates walking in my direction.

This was also the first time outside of the Tour de Cure that I was wearing a team jersey. Myself and my teammates had all decided to wear our Tour de Cure champion’s jerseys and it made us very easy to spot. Once my teammates arrived we stayed together as they got ready to ride.

The Ride

The ride started with a couple of miles of warm up on a runway of the Flagler airport. That, all by itself, was worth the price of admission! How often do you get to ride on a runway? It was awesome! The warm up led us right into the ride. We rode out on Rt 100 to A1A. Riding up the the enormous bridge across the Intercoastal Waterway to see the Atlantic Ocean spread out in front of us was just amazing.

Once we turned south on A1A, things really changed. The wind was intense, holding around 25 mph off the ocean from the south. It made keeping up any kind of speed a real challenge. You had to draft extremely close to the rider in front of you in order to receive lttile to any protection from the wind. I concentrated especially hard to maintain an even speed when I pulled for the team, which happened fairly often as we were switching up every mile.

Once we got past the first SAG stop, which was located on a beautiful park right next to the Intercoastal Waterway, we crossed the bridge and headed back north. The relief from the wind was enormous and our pace picked up to about 18 mph. We made good time back to the airport after which I had to run back to the hotel for the fastest shower I’ve ever taken before checking out and heading to lunch. 🙂

This was one of the most challenging rides I’ve ever done and one of the most rewarding because of it. My teammates really kept my spirits up and we helped each other keep going through the headwinds, which was a wonderful experience.