Road Cycling in Orlando
 

The short version - It appears my work is relocating me to Orlando, FL in the next couple months. I have been there several times & have the feeling it is not necessarily the safest / bike friendilest city in the south; but I don't have much of a choice.

Anybody have any suggestions on good places to ride? I don't have to live in one particular area but I would like to live somewhere where I can hop on my bike & get riding pretty quickly & easily!

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.

it is the place I started road biking, from orlando to the west to the east coast and back, sit down and eat for a bit, yeah riding in the a straight line gets old eventually, but there isn't much else there.
you will enjoy it. there are a fair number of cyclist there.


something i have noticed over the years, riding in the city is easier than cycling in the boonies as far as dealing with people goes. people from within city limits tend to blow at you less.

and at cracker barrel the biscuits and gravy are all you can eat, they don't advertise it

Clermont is just a few miles west of Orlando and, offers some good cycling roads and routes. And, there is a pretty strong cycling community there. Mount Dora is also a nice cycling area. But Clermont is particularly nice as it is very close to Orlando, has low traffic, good roads and even a few hills, believe it or not. Winter time temperatures are near perfect for riding and, in the summertime....well, you will want to ride early in the morning.

The Florida Freewheelers club provides a good sampling of routes in and around the area.

There are several good rail trails in the area, especially West Orange Trail; check here. There is also the Seminole-Wekiva Trail, which is not on that site. I'm not much of a roadie, but those are some very nice trails, and you could make good time on them, if that's your thing.

Orlando can be sketchy but as mentioned above, the Mt. Dora-Taveres-Eustis areas have
almost a New England feel to them. Very nice compared to a lot of the rest of the state.
BTW....Here in the West Palm area it is colder than Montana, today :)

I live a few miles east of downtown. Alot, but not all, of the roads that are being repaved are getting bike lanes in my area. I have no problem going out my front door and taking a ride that I feel fairly safe on. Biggest problems I've run into are construction zones that I didn't know were there.

I live in Longwood FL. There is good cycling around Deland, Clermont, Mount Dora, and up towards Eustis, Taveris and Umatilla.

The Florida Freewheelers have maps of bike routes on their site. You might want to check that out. It will give you a good idea of the local options.

As for safety, it is not great but it is not bad as long as you are reasonably careful.

Withlacoochee State Park bike path has the West Orange Trail and Blanchard Park path beat by a mile........

Thanks for the help; unfortunately it's about 70 miles away from where I need to be.

Welcome to Florida! :)

Where in Orlando will you be moving to (if you haven’t already?).

I’m on the east side near UCF:

There’s a short 10m ride near UCF and the Greenway Trail.

An ~18-20m ride out near Waterford Lakes via Innovation Way Drive (I’ll be doing a few laps around this one this weekend).

Seminole-Wekiva trail isn’t bad. That was a decent 27m ride on a MUP but I saw quite a few fellow cyclists on the roads to avoid the MUP traffic and cross road transitions.

Clermont is definitely popular as well. Lots of “hills” you won’t find in many other areas in Central Florida.

I also enjoyed the West Orange Trail but it’s a pretty busy MUP so you can’t really hammer it for very long. Expect stop signs to cross streets and slower spots behind walkers or those weird exercise machine bikes (I forget what they’re called) etc.