Journey to McGill Mountain Road

Mapmyride Route

Ride Photos by Quellet Cycling

Quellet Cycling
Where do I start with this blog entry? As usual it starts with rallying some riders for Saturday and I dug up a 54 mile route starting from the brewery that I had only done once. I adjusted that route and stretched it out to a 60 mile route and emailed the gang and it looked like I had some interested in the route as something a little different from the roads we have grown accustomed to lately. There were three groups of cyclists (mainly NARC members) and 9 decided to join me on this misty morning start (that wasn't in the forecast). The participants today were me, David, Jack, Gary Mike, Peter, Neil, Rod, Keith and Carole (who was new to our group, but she is a seasoned cyclist)

I can boast about the route because I did not create it to start with, but it did turn out to have a nice variety of terrain as we start to ramp up training for 3 State 3 Mountain. We had flatter roads with fast pace lines and at one point near the half way mark we were close to a 19 mph average without really hammering hard. We had a longer easy climb up Rock Fence Road and on the second half we encountered McGill Mountain Road, which had some short steep sections mixed in the climb. Once we were past that area the route still had some stingers of rolling hills that just kept lowering that average speed. Yet we kept moving along at a good pace with the sun beaming down and a smile on our faces for another awesome day on the North Georgia back roads. The group was great and I felt no stress as some tried to pin the "ride leader" label on me. I was content to roll along at what ever pace I felt and the group was right there and sometimes I was quite comfortable sitting toward the back cruising with my buddies.

The only disappointment of the day was that my Garmin 305 kept turning off while I was trying to lead this ride. Fortunately Gary had the route loaded, but still a bummer because I wanted to track the data of this route and the elevation gain.