South Reston's Hot, North Reston's Not for the Spandex Crowd

This awesome heat map of local cyclists' activities developed by app company Strava isn't horribly shocking to anyone in the spandex-wearing crowd: The W&OD trail, the unbroken white-hot line snaking northwest from D.C. to Leesburg is basically like I-95, the Cannonball Run, and that Kevin Bacon bicycle messenger movie rolled into one. Suck on that Marylanders, with your crooked, time-consuming bike paths along such time-wasting niceties as "creeks" and "canals"! Us Northern Virginians have places to go, and when our Ford Foci aren't available (and sometimes when they are), we get on the bike paths to get there!

But zoom in on Reston, and things get a little more interesting:



Turns out our miles and miles and miles and miles of Canadian-machinery-patrolled paths can't hold a candle to Lake Fairfax. Looks like literally no one rides in fancypants North Reston, although the not-so-recently dieted Personal Injury Lawyers Road remains a nirvana for the spandex crowd. And then there's that little blob of white-hot activity at Reston Town Center, which we guess means that when cyclists get that craving for carbs at around Mile 36 of their leisurely 45 mph ride back from Purcellville, they know where to find a midscale chain solution to their problems, the end.