After finishing his third Big Dam Bridge 100 in personal record time, Greg Calico stopped, got off his bike, greeted a couple of fellow finishers, and got out his smartphone.
He logged information from a GPS tracker into a fitness app called Strava, lagging behind his wife and daughter as they took his bike and headed for the shade along North Little Rock's Main Street.
"You gotta put it in Strava," he said, looking up and smiling, "or it didn't happen."
Calico, 59, was among the many who finished the full 100-mile bicycle ride in less than five hours Saturday. Thousands of riders from Arkansas and elsewhere took to the Arkansas River Trail for the event's 10th year, most passing through Little Rock and North Little Rock and then heading to Pinnacle Valley.
The most ambitious of riders -- Calico included -- traversed P̶u̶l̶a̶s̶k̶i̶,̶ ̶P̶e̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶F̶a̶u̶l̶k̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶i̶e̶s Pulaski and Perry counties*. All ended up in North Little Rock's Argenta district, where water, massages, beer and friends greeted them past the finish line.
Calico biked 100 miles in four hours and 44 minutes. That's eight minutes faster than last year and an hour better than his first time completing the full 100-mile ride in 2013, when he said he and some friends decided to "take it easy."
His wife, Tammy, and daughter, Corissa, who both rode the 32-mile route Saturday, shook their heads in disbelief that 100 miles could ever be easy.
Calico said he took a reasonable break around the 65-mile mark, where he drank some water and ate a peanut butter sandwich. But his fitness app shows he was only stopped for two minutes.
He said he could've kept going.
"Oh, you could've?" Tammy Calico said, smiling.
The Calicos became interested in cycling when they lived in California in the 1980s, where Greg Calico said cycling was really popular. But then they moved to Conway, where cycling was not as popular. Their bikes stayed in the garage for years, gathering dust.
Then, a few years ago, son Colin Calico asked his dad if he could get a new bike.
Greg Calico told him to get one of the old bikes fixed up instead. After watching Colin, now 25, ride for a while, Greg, Tammy and Corissa joined him. They're trying to recruit their second son, 28-year-old Carter, to ride, too.
Greg Calico now bikes to work every day, and Tammy Calico, 58, has ridden in her fourth long-distance tour in central Arkansas in three years. Corissa Calico, 20, who normally competes in running and swimming races, did her first cycling-only event Saturday.
She and her mom finished the 32-mile ride in two hours and 42 minutes.
Down Main Street from the Calicos on Saturday were several riders from Hideaway, Texas, a small town north of Tyler.
Randy Rexroat, 39, and his 12-year-old son, Marshall, rode the 68-mile race.
Like Greg and Tammy Calico, Rexroat was an avid rider until he had children, and his son reintroduced it to him about four years ago.
"Then Marshall told me he was interested in mountain biking," Rexroat said. That was when Marshall was 8. They've been riding in long-distance races since shortly after that.
They usually do the Hotter'N Hell 100 race in Wichita Falls, Texas, at the end of August, but they opted for the Big Dam Bridge 100 this year.
The Rexroats traveled with the Hideaway Hill Humpers cycling team, which has had members in the Big Dam Bridge 100 for as many as five years in a row.
None biked the 100-mile route, but the team had at least one member biking each of the 10-, 32-, 50- and 68-mile routes. Most, like the Rexroats, biked the 68-mile route.
"It was awesome. Very pretty. Except for that hill," Randy Rexroat said, referring to the stretch from Arkansas 113 to where it nears Arkansas 300 on Wye Mountain.
"That was fun," Marshall said, smiling.
Marshall sprinted up that hill at about mile 34, Rexroat said, passing several riders. At about mile 55, Rexroat said, Marshall told him he'd see him at the finish line and sped ahead. He finished in four hours, ahead of his father.
Despite the hill and the finish, the Rexroats plan to take part in the ride again next year.
Randy Rexroat first passed through Little Rock when he was in high school and was thinking about going to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He didn't think much of the city back in the 1990s.
"This changes that," he said, referring to Saturday's event and what he saw in his 68-mile trek. "We'll make this an every year event now."
Metro on 09/27/2015
*CORRECTION: The Big Dam Bridge 100 is a 100-mile bike ride through Pulaski and Perry counties. An earlier version of this article in Sunday's editions incorrectly described the course route.