During the night the Watopia Three Little Sisters route popped in my mind and I thought I would ride it today. But after looking at the route profile I wanted a little less climbing. Looking at the upcoming events I saw the ZHCC Sandy & Dandy ride starting at 12:30 and chose it. The ride used the Makuri Islands Fine and Sandy route for 60 minutes. My only previous ride on this route was December 18, 2022, going 19.94 miles in 1:24:41, 3 laps. I didn’t think of that when I anticipated riding 3 laps in 60 minutes today. I rode 14.58 miles today, just over 2 laps. I climbed 600 feet. One lap was 6.6 miles with a .1 mile lead-in before lap 1. ZHCC chose the Zwift gravel bike for everyone. I wouldn’t call this route a gravel one but there were several sections of sand as you can see in the video. 34 or 35 Zwifters rode in the group.

Climbing wasn’t the big item on the route but it began not long after the lead-in up a short hill and down to ride .42 miles to the first real climb circling around to get up on the bridge over the road just rode. It seemed longer than .45 mile and gaining about 65 feet. I slowed to single digit speed. Over the peak the descent lasted .41 miles and then back up a hill to a flat top then down again with rolling terrain back for another ride up to the wooden bridge and over the road. This time the downhill and rolling roads took a different direction for 2.01 miles. At that point the ride went up hill for .47 of a mile topping out at 83 feet. From there the ride went over roads from early in the ride. The SportTracks image below shows the route profile better than Strava. There were two sprints: Boardwalk and Tidepool. The blue section in the middle of the profile shows the lap breakdown.

Strava results: PR on Fine and Sandy (25:45), PR on Mech Isle Climb CW (3:16), and 2nd fastest time on Fine and Sandy (27:01).