The Dirty Pecan 100

[insert Brooks and Dunn lyrics here]

Earlier this month, I rode the Dirty Pecan 100: a hundred-mile adventure route through the rolling red clay hills of north Florida and south Georgia. After the event, Russ met me for dinner at our favorite pizza place and asked me why I decided to drive all the way "home" to do my first century ride.  I've waxed eloquent (hopefully) about my love for my home state elsewhere, but perhaps it bears repeating. 

"Topophilia" is what geographer Yi Fu Tuan calls, "the love of place." Place is not merely a location but all the things that give it its unique characteristics. Location is just a series of alphanumeric characters expressed as the intersection of latitude and longitude: 30°32'18.1"N 83°54'59.7"W.  BORING. 

My love for this particular place is the saw palmettos and pine savannas; the sweet tea-colored rivers and the crystal clear ones; the floodplain swamps and white sandy beaches; raw oysters and fried catfish; the saw-toothed alligators and non-hibernating black bears. These are what make northern Florida special.

I often tell people if they've never been to a family fish fry in which their uncle (wearing cut-off jorts and bare feet) offered them the fresh-caught gator he killed earlier that morning while he was weed-whacking down by the river, then they've never actually been to Florida. Things are just different here. Including the gravel. 

Florida gravel is not like Tennessee gravel. Mostly because it mostly isn't gravel. It's clay, dirt, and sand, usually above a hard, limestone bed. Sometimes the clay is so hard-packed it rides like asphalt. But it changes on a dime. One minute you're pedaling at twenty miles an hour, the next second your fishtailing through sugar sand. It's varied, fast, and fun. 

The Dirty Pecan 100 is an unsupported and mostly unmarked "adventure" route that starts at the Jefferson County Extension office near Monticello, Florida. The route follows beautiful red clay roads through farms and plantations up into Georgia. Most of the plantations are used for hunting and the forests offer canopied roads with good shade. The farm roads have been cleared for crops and provide a good time to work on your tan lines. If it's dry and hot you may be lucky enough to catch the fertilizer-filled mist from industrial farm sprinkler systems. A small-town gas station waits at mile 56 before heading back down to Florida. 

Shortly after crossing the Florida-Georgia line is a hellish seven-mile stretch of sugar sand: Gum Swamp Road. Imagine a nice long walk on the beach except it's the part of the beach that high tide never touches. Your feet sink and slip with every step and you're also pushing your bicycle through it. This goes on for seven miles. I've wanted a fat bike for a long time and I've never wanted 4" inch tires more than in the 2+ hours it took to finish that segment (I also had two mechanicals I had to deal with). 

The last fourteen miles are mostly paved country roads through lovely pecan orchards before passing through the town square of Monticello. The Dirty Pecan is my longest ride to date and my first ever race/event ride. Below are five notes, observations, and comments about it. 

final road section back to Monticello

1. Out of the hundreds of Dirty Pecan riders, I think I was the only cyclist not wearing a lycra/spandex kit, or fancy clip-in shoes. I wore cut-off shorts, a dry-fit tee from REI, a pair of Vans, and a healthy application of chamois butter. I didn't chafe at all. Lots of people made comments about my shoes -- some shocked, some stoked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

2. On the drive down, I listened to an interview with UNC's former basketball coach, Roy Williams. The hall of fame member confessed he never looked at the scoreboard during the first half of a game. I decided to never check my Strava data until I made it to the gas station in Boston, Georgia (just over halfway). Because I feared I missed a valuable water source, I ended up taking a peek. I figured I had gone 30 miles... I had gone 47. That felt good. Thanks, Roy. Also, go Noles, Roy. 

3. I felt GREAT miles 0-56, not so great 56-66, very good 67-80, THE ABSOLUTE BOWELS OF HELL 81-90 (seven-mile sugar sand hike-a-bike and two mechanicals), and okay but done 91-104.

(a) Everyone told me at the start of the event that the 80 is the best distance because it avoids the sand on the nine-mile Gum Swamp Road. I shrugged it off because Russ and I suffered through so much sugar sand bikepacking last year. I now know it is one thing to hit sand at mile 25 and a totally different thing to hit sand at mile 82. It took me 2 hours to do this segment and I had a very childish temper tantrum about it. Whoops.  

(b) Josh loaned me his GPS device and there is absolutely no way I could have done the route without it. At mile 82 I needed to fix a flat, so I flipped my bike over and when I did, I smashed a ton of buttons that caused alarms to go off. It was a whole ordeal. Because I'm an idiot who can't figure computer things out, I was never able to use it for navigation again. I spent the next 7 or 8 miles just hoping I was going the correct way.

4. Other than navigating, I was most nervous about socializing. Most cyclists were nice but not terribly talkative. Almost everyone I saw was riding with 2-3 friends or their club or team with matching kits. I rode most of the route by myself, exchanging the occasional pleasantries with folks. I did finish the last 14 miles with two dudes from Tallahassee who let me join since my GPS doinked out. They were nice and I owe them each a beer. 

5. Special thanks to Brooks who let me come over late one night to tune my bike before I left; Payton for ultimately convincing me not to ride my singlespeed for my first century; Josh who mailed me his Garmin GPS device; my mother, who I called while having a slightly dehydrated panic attack and forced her to call my friend Josh until he called me back to fix the GPS device; and to Russ who bought me dinner at Decent Pizza afterward. 

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