If you'll recall (maybe you saw our Instagram Story?) we partnered up with Davis County (past post here.) to let you know all about the Antelope by Moonlight bike ride! It's an annual bike ride that's 24 miles on Antelope Island on a full moon night!

While I’ve never done any kind of bike race in my life, I feel that I'm not a super newbie to cycling itself.  I am for sure a newbie in the racing aspect. For the past 5 years I’ve been doing spin classes at the gym. Since having a baby, I’ve probably only been about 5 times. (Come to find out, trying to get to the gym with 3 kids is nearly impossible since most gyms don’t take babies until 6months.)

So, I wasn’t in awesome shape.

I did know that I can cover around 16-20 miles in 45 minutes for spin classes, so I knew we’d be on the bike for at least 2 hours.

We weren’t sure how early we should arrive, since the ride didn’t start until 10pm that night. We didn’t want to arrive too early, as it’s been soooooo hot. We got to White Rock Bay around 8 pm. I’d say we arrived on the more early side. But there wasn’t a line at any of the booths or will-call.

We picked up our wristbands, mosquito wristband, t-shirts, drinks and walked around checking out the booths. (There were about 10 or so there.) After making a few stops we headed back to our truck so we could deck out our bikes with glow sticks. I had all these intentions of getting some kind of fun shirt made for the ride, but we just decided to wear our Salt Project Shirts.

You could see the moon coming up while the sun was setting.

We took the glow sticks and weaved them through the tires. Man, they looked pretty sweet at night! We didn’t really have as many as I would have liked, but I did have a few for some glasses and earrings to put in my hair.

Around 9:30 they had the Costume Competition.

I couldn’t believe some of the costumes people had. All the characters from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were there, angels, Goofy, butterflies, Red White and Blue. There were lots of other people dressed up in matching outfits or fun socks.

After watching the costume party, we went back to our bikes to just relax for a few minutes. We watched as hundreds of people started lining up on the road for the ride.

There were two or three groups of bikers. Experience racers, cruisers and slow. There were over 1,300 riders that night!

We started out the ride strong and in the middle! It was pretty exhilarating to be biking in the dark on Antelope Island. The first part was mainly downhill so that was super fun. After a good 30 minutes people started pacing out and it was crazy to see the miles of biker lights.

Along the way there were water stops and people to help fix your bike. Luckily, we didn’t have any hiccups along the way. I was probably passed more than I was able to pass other people. Either way, it was fun seeing people go by in different outfits and all sorts of lights.

Since the road is only lit by the bike lights and moon, it’s hard to gauge how far we’d gone. Especially since there were lines of bike lights in front and behind. After an hour of cycling, we finally hit the midpoint at the historic Fielding Garr Ranch! There were bikes lined up all over the parking lot. There were also spotlights with thousands of bugs flying all over too. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but we parked our bikes and followed the crowd to the barn.

At the barn there was music and snacks! We were given bananas, apples, oranges, Kind bars and potato chips.

I wasn’t feelings upper hungry, but I ate nonetheless. I’m glad I did, because I did feel a serious boost of energy.  We didn’t stay long at the barn, I have this serious thing against mosquitos and they love to munch on me.

As we started back, we still saw many bikers going in the opposite way. I couldn’t believe the amount of people pulling kid trailers! I’m not sure how they did it.

About half way back I kind of lost my energy. I’m not sure if it was as much physical as it was my brain was super tired. 11:30pm is kind of crazy time to be biking right? While there were times my heart rate got up there, I wouldn’t say I was gasping for breath. Let’s face it though, the last part was uphill so it was my body getting super tired.

But we made it! Cars may have already been pulling out to go home, but at 12:14 we rolled up to our trucks. While we were tired, we were also pumped and ready to ride next year!

Be sure to check out my list of things to know below.