Panama City, FL - Jacksonville, FL (7)

Jürgen Freier
May 5
4 min read

Updated: May 7

After relaxing on the beach in Panama for two days, I was full of energy again to complete the final stretch to the Atlantic and thus my main goal of "coast to coast."

Some of you have asked me over the past few weeks how I manage to balance everything with my job. It was very easy: After I finished my previous engagement, I simply didn't seek a new one, which meant I had a completely clear mind. No regular emails, no emergency calls, and no overflowing mail box. What a quality of life.

Nevertheless, I'm not retired from my professional life yet and will, of course, start something new afterwards. Discussions about this have been going on quietly in the background, and I was in contact with several potential new companies. The day after leaving Panama City, I had a crucial teams-call, so I set myself the goal of staying overnight in a business hotel in Tallahassee. It was about 180 km to get there. I hadn't ridden such a long leg here before, but I had planned it for that day for this reason. So I started quite early with a good average pace. I also wanted to consume most of my food while cycling.

That went great for the first two hours, but suddenly I came to a sandy section. Cycling there was virtually impossible, so I was forced to get off the bike. Pushing in deep sand with a heavy bike and cycling shoes is significantly more difficult than cycling. I had to get through it for 5 km! It easily took me an hour and a half, but worse still, without the wind, the heat became unbearable. I arrived in the next town pretty exhausted, where I had to recover and refuel. Sometime later in the afternoon, I crossed the Apalachicola River, and thus the border to the next time zone, which runs right through the middle of Florida. So I lost another hour, which I didn't have on my radar screen at all. And so it happened that I actually arrived in Tallahassee in the dark. I had to install my lights which were somewhere in any of my bags, another 30 minutes lost. Tallahassee is located in hilly terrain, and the hotel I had chosen was right at the top, so the last half hour was all uphill. Glad to arrive in a nice place and some relaxing time after a tough day.

The conversation the next morning went very well, and we agreed on a start date for my next job on May 15th. (official announcement will be published soon). There was no question that I would definitely ride to the Atlantic, regardless of new professional obligations. But I also needed a bit more time to recover from all the cycling. Running was much more difficult with my heavy legs the whole time. My goal of competing in a long-distance triathlon in Hamburg on June 1st still stood. So I decided to switch to more running training after Jacksonville, if it wasn't too late for that anyway. As I was already quite familiar with the coast from Daytona Beach to the Florida keys from previous vacations, I decided to rent a car again in Jacksonville. For finding packing materials for the return flight from Miami I needed a car at a given point in time in any case. I scheduled the flight to Europe for May 3rd, which allowed me another 2-3 weeks of good training in familiar surroundings in a 50 m olympic pool for swimming as well in good running tracks. And of course I was curious to find out my current bike performance on a race bike with NO luggage. Since the start I had lost 6 kg of weight, which should improve my run and bike times.

A summary of the entire trip, including last week's experience, well be reported in a separate blog tomorrow.

The Atlantic coast in Jacksonville Beach after 3.500 km on my bicycle since San Francisco in almost 6 weeks.

It was hard to leave Panama City but this journey was about riding, not about relaxing.

All of the sudden this sandy section begun. Completely unexpectedly. No idea why. Maybe it was related to an Indian reserve that was on that road.

The sand was pretty deep and riding my bicycle was not possible.

You get an idea how deep I sunk into the sand while walking.

After 5 km I arrived at a reasonble road again. and crossed after hours this river

to enter Eastern Time Zone

Florida's capital city Tallahassee

Followed by very tropical areas with tree covered roads.

and nice smaller towns

After a night in Madison, I had another early morning start to cover another 170 km to Jacksonville and the Atlantic coast

Benches are very rare and mainly in state forests available

These last 25 km from Baldwin to Jacksonville were done on a bike path on a former railway track

Last time fully packed bike as I rented a car in Jacksonville International airport and could ride from now on luggage free :-) which was a huge relief.