Training down South

I had a pretty frightening experience on my bike yesterday. I guess I need to start by telling you that one of my goals this training season is to find all the dirt roads in Gainesville and ride them. They're a good change of pace, and they make the time go by faster. I went on Google maps, found a road I hadn't been on before, and I decided I would try to find it. I was doing a 3-hour ride that day, so I thought it would be perfect for passing the time.

I rode about 17 miles outside of town and found a road that was approximately in the same place where this road was supposed to be. It was a really rural area with no street signs, so there was no telling if it was the right road or not. I hesitated for a second, but I was feeling adventurous, so I rode off the pavement.

Everything went great for the first couple miles. I was cycling through the beautiful woods, and I didn't have to worry about cars. Then, I turned a bend and the road got really sandy really fast. My bike was fishtailing all over the place. At one point, I almost crashed, but I unclipped and saved myself. I walked my bike for a bit. Before I got back on, I paused for a second and looked around. That's when I realized how ALONE I was. It looked like this in every direction:


Alone in the middle of nowhere Florida. And, of course, that's when all the scary stories about people getting killed in the woods started to come back to me. I remembered this particular one that Jason told me about a serial killer near his house in New England who duct tapped women to trees. An image of the pepper spray I had forgotten, sitting on my desk at home, flashed through my mind. Goshdarnit. Should I turn back or keep going? I checked my cell phone - no service. Was this even the right road? Maybe the it gets better around the next bend. I'm going to die out here.

I frantically got back on my bike and started riding again. I came to a fork in the road that I didn't remember seeing on the map. I took the left fork because it felt like the right one. As I was riding along, I kept saying under my breath "I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die." It set a tempo that kept me going.

I heard several big noises in the woods and pictured a Florida panther tackling me like they do deer on nature shows. Would a panther mistake me as a deer? When I'm on my bike, I'm about the same height/same speed as a deer. When I hit the sandy spots and swerve, I probably look like a sick deer, perfect prey. There was a ditch full of water by the side of the road. What if there was an alligator? Do black mambas live in the Southeast U.S.?

I kept riding and looking over my shoulder, expecting to see a pickup truck full of men with no morals quickly closing the distance between us. I ended up riding down this dirt road for half an hour with no other signs of human life aside from the road itself and a couple 'private property keep out' signs. Eventually, the sand turned to packed dirt, which turned into gravel again, and I popped out somewhere on the Hawthorne trail. I WAS ALIVE! haha. Never been happier to see the trail before.

I really need a training partner.