Sky Loop -- 2 June 2012

Fantastic day on the bike!  I had been watching the weather forecast since early in the week hoping the forecast for cool temps would pan out for Saturday.  Temps in the mid-50's starting out was too good to be true.  Fortunately, it was true!  These rides are impromptu affairs where someone posts on atlbike.org a start time.  You never know how many riders will show up.  Today's weather drew a large crowd.  Several rode in on the Silver Comet.  I didn't know most of the riders, but it is a friendly group.

The Sky Loop is a route set up by "webgeek" aka Chris at atlbike.org starting at the Racetrack in Hiram and looping south and west for 40 miles.  The ride is billed as an intermediate training ride and that is pretty accurate.  Plenty of hills and longer climbing grades on this route.

I got to the parking lot a little later than I had planned, and was a little rushed in getting "suited up".  We rolled out a little after the announced start time of 8:00.  We all leave together, but it doesn't take long for the group to split up into subgroups along average speed lines.  The A group is very fast averaging nearly 20 mph.  The B group is more like 16-17 mph.

After the Memorial Day ride where I couldn't ride on level ground very well, I was a little nervous to see how I felt.  I had only walked a few miles during the week; no bike riding.  My legs felt strong, but I planned on falling off the back of the pack once we got into the hills.  It turns out I was able to keep up over the most difficult parts which really fired me up.  After the store stop, I felt really strong.  The Sky Loop comes back into the Silver Comet at the Tara Drummond trailhead in Paulding County and is the last rest stop where we regroup for the final 8 miles or so back to the start.

There must have been about 12 of us in one group thundering back on the Silver Comet.  With the great weather, there were tons of folks out on the Comet.  Bike riders, runners, etc.  I wished I had taken a few pictures of our group.

This route is a great training route for upcoming big group rides.  Next big ride is in 2 weeks over in Braselton, GA for the Jackson County Brevet.  This was my first ride over 60 miles last year and it was touch-and-go on whether I was going to make it.  I'm better prepared, but the last 15 miles is all uphill.