Horsefarm Hundred

Last week I received my email entry to the October 19-20 Gainesville Cycling Club's Gainesville Cycling Festival, The Orthopaedic Institute Santa Fe Century and the Horse Farm Hundred. And then yesterday, my friend Teri Harty called from Deland, wanting to ride the event as a memorial to our friend Roger Sessler.
In 2003 I rode my first one hundred mile century with Roger, we riding for free since I had designed the tee shirt and as a result of our volunteering the day before at the Watermelon Park rest stop for the Santa Fe Century. Rodger and I continued to ride and volunteer up until 2008, riding our final century with Teri Harty and the VetMed Club, Teri being a UF vet school graduate.
Roger passed away in October of 2011 with complications from a heart oblation and ensuing kidney failure as a result. I have yet to ride any distance to speak of since his passing. He was a grand motivator and could  always be called upon for a long ride, at a pace that would not wear you out.
Every fall I long to get in shape and ride a century, especially the Horsefarm. And in shape you have to be for the entire Horsefarm peloton does not slack. The last century we rode, while I rode on ahead, Roger and Teri were the final two finishers. It is not a Sunday stroll through the Horsefarms of Ocala and back to Morningside Nature Center in Gainesville. It is a race, even though none of the riders would admit to it.
When the first cool front finally arrives, I will pump the Basso steel bike with the Gatorskin clinchers up to 110 psi and don the lycra and fill the waterbottles. I think I will ride out toward Gum Swamp in the Osceola Forest, a route we so often took. Less traffic as with each passing year, riding upon highways has become all the more deadly with the distracted texting and facebooking.
If I am able to make it a twenty-five miler, I will be content. I will ride alone, for all my friends are faster and I would not want to slow them down. Must every ride always be a see who finishes fastest and first?
I miss my friend Roger.