Originally Posted by Kopsis

I've haven't done anything in the glades, but I've ridden the trails around Lake Apopka, Piggy's Revenge in the Carlton Preserve near North Port, and I'm doing a 50k gravel ride this weekend at the Babcock-Webb area in Punta Gorda. My advice would be drops over flats. It's easy to run into long straight sections (flat kind of goes without saying) with a good solid headwind and being able to get more aero in the drops is nice. I also find that a wide grip (even on drops) on long rough but non-technical stretches gets really fatiguing. Flat bars make sense on singletrack where you need the control, but that's rarely an issue on FL gravel (and even a lot of our singletrack is rideable on a CX bike with conventional drops).