Village Idiots continue their mission to make roadways safer for cyclists

Word on the street about the Village Idiots Cycling Club of Lakewood Ranch is its members have a serious need for speed. And competition. President Dawn Zielinski is aware of the rep. “There are people who won’t ride with us because we’re known as the fast group,” she admits.

Those observers are mostly paying attention to the club’s A Group, says Zielinski. Those riders, mostly men, ride 35 miles at 26-plus mph, and nearly all of them compete in statewide races in either cycling, mountain biking or triathlon. 

But the Village Idiots welcomes any cyclist who can start out riding in D Group at 14-16 mph for 20 miles with a no-drop rule, which means all participants stay and finish together. 

That’s what attracted 25-year cycling veteran Jill Litzenberg, who participates in the club’s 7:30 a.m. Bacon Ride every Saturday morning.

Four years ago Litzenberg started living in Venice from March through May. But it wasn’t until 2024, when a fellow Wisconsinite moved to Lakewood Ranch, that she found her cycling people. “I like knowing we are going to stick together in a group; there’s camaraderie and a chance to meet new people. It’s worth the 30- to 45-minute drive to LWR,” she says.

Mutual support was at the heart of the group’s inception 15 years ago, when a bunch of friends from Lakewood Ranch started casually riding together. “They’d go out as one group, and if someone didn’t feel like keeping up, they’d just drop off,” says Zielinski. 

Photo by Mark M. Odell

Proving Lakewood Ranch was truly designed with cycling in mind, the club’s numbers grew quickly. When Zielinski joined in 2014, the club had amassed 65 members, a name that was partly based on their meeting place at the time (Village Bikes) and four groups (A-D) delineated by speed. She became one of only three women in the D Group, who remain her best friends. (Today the club has some 200 members, with an annual fee of $35.)  

“Together, we got very good at cycling, but we still weren’t really very fast. Now, I mostly ride C+ but I’m trying to bridge myself back to B,” she says. It wasn’t even a full year before this “people-oriented person” became the Village Idiot’s first-ever social director, and then, in 2019, she was named president.

Ideally, no matter a rider’s start speed, they should aspire to become better and faster — in that order — to feel like the Village Idiots is right for them. “Better means becoming a more proficient and skilled rider. That needs to happen before moving to faster groups: with speed comes the potential of more things happening,” says Zielinski.

As president, Zielinski has dedicated significant time and effort to promoting safety — starting with personally riding alongside newcomers to teach group riding protocols, and also by advocating for cyclists’ rights on the road.

For instance, when a local official attempted to block cyclists from using Hidden River Trail, Zielinski and other members of the club acted quickly to stop it. “I pulled a letter from our archives that proved, in 2015, the Manatee County Commission declared that bicycles could take full use of that road,” she says.

Little did she know, many more challenges awaited when, about a year later, the pandemic hit. Despite the uncertainty, the club’s membership surged, driven by new residents in Lakewood Ranch and a growing interest in cycling and outdoor pursuits.  Membership grew from 134 in March 2020 to 252 two years later. Membership is steady around 200 today, says Zielinski.

“I know people who were considering three different areas in Florida, and they chose Lakewood Ranch because of our group,” she says. 

“Others would come, stay for a month, ride with us, and end up moving here,” she adds.

Take Shawna and Marty Stiegmann, for example. Both are nationally ranked competitive cyclists who relocated from Richmond, Virginia to Sarasota in 2020 to be closer to their mothers. Dedicated cyclists, they chose to live in Deer Creek for its proximity to the Legacy Trail, where they can get their “power and junk miles in,” says Marty.

“When we first got here, we tried to get plugged in (to a group). We rode with this other club and then we heard about the Village Idiots,” he says. “We went up there and man, that first ride I got shot out of a cannon backwards and loved it.”

The couple decided to start at the B+ Group level, but quickly moved up to A Group. “Two times a week we go up there and bleed. It’s a drop ride, and we all know what we’re in for,” he says, adding that he fantasizes about “breaking off the front and dropping everybody behind.” After, it’s all about camaraderie, he adds. “We stop and tell war stories or go have a beer together.”