Spring Racing

April feels like borrowed time in Florida. The temps are still cooperating — 60s at sunrise, maybe low 70s by midday if you catch a good week — and the humidity hasn’t yet settled into that permanent residency it takes up from June through September. Once we’re past late April, the conditions start degrading quickly. If you’re going to race, this is the window. I’ve used these spring weeks to race more than run for fun for years now, for practical reasons: it’s the one stretch where I can push hard without managing heat risk, recover faster between efforts, and string together race weekends without ending up destroyed. Florida’s real racing season runs roughly from February through late April, and I try to make use of it. ...

Most people come to the Florida Roots Trail Series assuming it can’t be that hard. Florida, right? No mountains. The elevation chart is basically flat. They’re going to get this thing done. Then they hit mile two on the Fort Clinch singletrack, where the trail rolls hard over a series of dune ridges, and they adjust their expectations. The course isn’t a killer by any external benchmark. The full loop is six miles on natural surface through maritime forest. Total elevation gain is around eighty feet. But it’s eighty feet that comes in constant short punches — up and over, pivot, root, soft sand, up again — through live-oak canopy that offers the kind of shade Florida running rarely provides. Run it hard and you feel it. I’ve been around the loop in 34:16, which is genuinely fast over that terrain, and I’ve also had days where the soft sand sections in the back half humbled me in ways I didn’t expect. It’s an honest course on its own terms. ...