The Silver Comet 70mile brick

The Silver Comet

Ever since I found out I was moving to Atlanta, my obvious first thoughts were; “where and who can I train with?” Of the many MANY triathletes here in the Atlanta area, two words kept coming up. Silver Comet. This is a trail that goes from just outside of the city to Alabama. It’s a wonderful and incredible idea, and maintained extremely well! Atlanta is very lucky to have this. No cars, no motorized vehicles, just cyclists, runner and…this is where this post begins.

The head of the trail starts off of a road called Mavell, but there are numerous other entrances to get on or off of the Silver Comet. No one told me that perhaps another starting point would be a good idea, so I headed down to Mavell and figured I would start from there. (I feel like Happy Gilmore on the 9^th green at 9 ahahaha) Unfortunately, Mavell Rd is not a location that you can put into a GPS, so I found a random street number and entered it. Not positive this would take me to where I wanted to go, when I got off the exit, I saw two cars, both with bike racks and bikes on them. I figured, shut the GPS off and follow because they had to be going to the Silver Comet to ride. WRONG!!!

So I finally get to the trail at the Mavell road entrance and find 9,258,324 cars, bikes, runners, and wait for it…dog walkers, baby strollers, kids on bikes, mothers pushing kids on bikes, dads pushing mothers pushing kids on bikes with strollers and dolls in them. ARGGHHHHH!!! How the hell was I to ride through this giant mass of family sludge?? Good thing I played ball and I think Chicky showed her agile abilities too. I put my mp3 player in, cranked it up and took off.

Yep, the first 10 miles, nothing but kids, strollers, dogs and the aforementioned. Everyone is so flippin nice down here I didn’t want to yell so Chicky and I just weaved the best we could. We had a mission to accomplish and granted, we were late due to my dumb ass following cars rather than the GPS, which by the way, took me right to it, so we had to deal. Lesson learned, get there early, go to a different place to start and follow the damn GPS!

Ok, onto the ride. After only averaging about 17mph for the first 10 miles, (Im proud of that) I took off. My legs felt great, I had three bottles of Infinite (the best stuff on earth!) and 3 gels in my back pockets. Oh yeah, completely dressed in my PTC kit!!! (I need a white top, though…ugh the black) The Silver Comet is FAST! Hovering right around 25-26mph, Chicky and I were loving it! Obviously there were still plenty of people out there but once into Cobb County and then into Polk County it was at a minimum. There were construction workers on the trail and get this, they even had guys sweeping off the road so there was no dirt! Pittsburgh, take some notes huh!! While pen dot(not capped on purpose) is throwing oil and chips everywhere, making it a damn hazard for cyclists, Atlanta is cleaning the 100+ mile path they built specifically for active people!

Kudos and bravo ATL! Im impressed!! I will be donating to this site and doing my part to keep it nice. I saw only one gel pack on the side of the trail and I can only assume the rider or runner did not know it fell out of their pocket because the rest of the trail, spotless!!!

Back to my ride: Nutrition was dead on, however the heat here is new for me and I ran out of drink with 10 miles to go. That’s when I decided to calm it down and ease back in before my run. No need to push dehydration limits. But my salt intake was great, no head aches after, no bonking and best part, my heart rate stayed in check. Not bad for the first 70 mile brick of the season.

Tomorrow I am running in the a.m and open water swimming with the Atlanta Tri Club at lake Allatoona. Looking forward to meeting some great athletes and getting in a lake for the first time of the year. Not a bad way to end my first quality week of training here. Ill return to the base building for the next two and then plan to do a sprint tri for fun either on the 29^th or the 30^th, but that still remains up in the air as I need to assess my legs each day.

Great to be here! Love my job and my boss is fantastic! Great to be outside! And Great to be surrounded by Triathletes all over!! Thanks ATL! See you all out there!!!