The A1A Run: Fort Lauderdale to Key Largo and Back

It's about 130 miles round trip, most of it flat and straight, and it's still one of the best days you can have on a bike in South Florida. Not because the road is technical — it isn't — but because of what's on either side of it.

Leave early. This is the whole trick and it's the part people skip.

Leave before seven

Not for the traffic, though that helps. For the light and the temperature.

By ten in summer the tarmac is radiating heat back at you and the ride turns into an endurance exercise. At six-thirty the air is still soft, the sun is low over the Atlantic on your left, and the whole coast is empty for another hour. It's a completely different road at those two times of day.

The other reason: you want to be heading back north in the late afternoon, not the middle of the day. Plan the whole thing backwards from that.

The coastal stretch

A1A south out of Fort Lauderdale runs you along the beach for a good while — condos on the right, ocean on the left, a 35 mph limit that is enforced with genuine enthusiasm.

Don't fight it. This section isn't about speed. It's stoplights and pedestrians and people opening car doors without looking, and the reward for going slowly is that you actually see the water. Save your attention for the traffic; it's busier than it looks.

You'll lose the coast around Miami Beach and drop inland. That transition is abrupt and unlovely. Push through it.

US-1 and the run south

The middle third is the price of admission. Urban highway, heavy traffic, long light cycles, not much to look at. It's the least interesting hour of the day and there's no clever way around it.

Hydrate here. It sounds like small advice and it isn't. You lose more water than you think at highway speed in a jacket, and the symptoms show up as poor judgement before they show up as thirst.

Dehydration doesn't announce itself. It just quietly makes you a worse rider.

Card Sound Road — take it

Most people run straight down US-1 into Key Largo. Don't. Turn off onto Card Sound Road and take the long way in.

It's a two-lane running through mangrove and open water, almost no traffic, and it climbs over a genuine bridge — a real arc with a view from the top, which in Florida is close to a geological event. There's a toll. It's small. Pay it and stop at the top.

This ten-mile detour is the reason to do the whole ride. If you do nothing else on this route, do this.

Watch for

• Standing water on the mangrove sections after rain — it sits across the road and it's deeper than it looks.
• Crosswind on the bridges. Sudden, from the side, and strong enough to move you a foot.
• Sun glare heading north in the late afternoon. A tinted visor is not optional on the return leg.
• Wildlife on Card Sound at dawn and dusk. Herons don't check for traffic.
• Sand at the edges of every coastal turn. Stay off the outside line.

The return

Head back mid-afternoon and you'll hit the coastal stretch as the light turns. That last hour up A1A with the sun behind the buildings and the ocean going gold is the part you'll remember.

You'll also be tired in a specific way — sun, wind and concentration rather than distance. Factor that in. The last twenty miles is where people make mistakes, and it's not because the road got harder.

What to bring

More water than you think. A tinted visor. Sunscreen on your neck and the back of your hands, which is where you'll burn and won't notice until that night. And gloves you can wear for six hours without your palms cooking.

Then go. It's the best 130 miles within reach of the city, and about 120 of them are worth the trip.