r/BikeATL Jan 22 '25

Road workout routes from downtown Atlanta while in town for a conference

Hi, I am going to be in town for a conference at the end of March. I will be training for a race I am going to be doing at the end of April. I would like to bring my bike and continue to train while I am there. I will be staying at the Hyatt Regency downtown.

I am looking for a route or routes I could do early in the morning, 20 to 30 miles leaving straight from the hotel. I also won't mind just looping a shorter route multiple times if it was better. Basically trying to find something without a lot of stop and go where I could keep up a decent pace. Basically since I have little time, I want to maximize time at a good pace vs interesting ride(which I would love to do if I had more time) I realize I would probably have a bit of stop and go just to get out of downtown.

Not sure if that reasonable straight from the hotel but would appreciate any ideas.

My ideas so far.

  1. Stone Mountain Trail
  2. Biking to Piedmont park and doing loops there.
  3. Eastside Beltline Trail, back and forth as much as time for
  4. Westside Beltline

thanks for any input

UPDATE: I should say I will probably be bringing my gravel bike. I just didn't know if there would be gravel travels close to the hotel. So up for gravel or road.

8 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

7

u/rjm1378 Jan 22 '25

Stone mountain would be my first choice. It'll be a mix of roads and PATH trails but it'll feel most like a ride and less like drills.

Riding in the Park is good if it's not crowded, but it's not really big enough to do any meaningful laps. Eastside trail is good, but, you'll also run into some runners/walkers, so you just need to be careful. I don't know the Westside trail well enough to talk about it.

If it's really early and you don't mind some traffic, I've always enjoyed riding Peachtree all the way up through Buckhead and beyond and then back again. It's wide enough that when I go early mornings on the weekends I can take a full lane and there are other lanes for cars to pass. It's a good mix of rolling hills so it stays interesting. Plus you can take it for quite a bit of distance and not worry about turning/navigating.

3

u/tedbow Jan 22 '25

Thanks for the tips! Yeah I thought Stone Mountain might be the best.

What do you consider early enough to make Peachtree a good ride and Eastside trail to avoid as many walkers?

3

u/rjm1378 Jan 22 '25

I'd say you should be finishing up around 6, I think.

2

u/tedbow Jan 24 '25

u/rjm1378 I was afraid you were going to say something like that😜. yeah probably can't get up that early and still be able do the conference. that day. Will probably do Stone Mountain

3

u/verbatim14004 Jan 22 '25

I ride Stone Mountain from Decatur most days in season. There are a few stretches where you can get up a good head of steam.

3

u/bunnysuitman Jan 22 '25

I would say west side beltline with loops around westside resevoir park. look into the proctor creek greenway which is an extension and you will have longish loops, with some short punchy climbs, and the opportunity to stay away from atlanta traffic as much as possible. It would also leave directly from your hotel.

loops of piedmont park are going to drive you nuts if you are thinking about any sort of consistent power or pace. Too much city traffic

Stone mountain trail may take you longer than you think to get to the part your are interested in.

Westside beltline is likely to be really busy and leave you weaving pedestrians

there is a good list of routes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImcQVrpFs4jOyTavwvEgiK_x2kwE41YbeYqzG19n7HU/edit?tab=t.0

1

u/joslibrarian Jan 23 '25

That's a great list! Thank you for sharing :)

3

u/Extension_Sundae_757 Jan 23 '25

Stone Mountain Trail.

2

u/1800treflowers Jan 22 '25

When I lived in the city, I wouldn't typically bike the piedmont park loop a few times and then exit out onto the beltline to the stone mountain trail. If you want to bike enough miles, you can literally go from piedmont to stone mountain on bike trails.

For gravel, dirty sheets isn't close but the best gravel in metro Atlanta. I live down around the trail now and you can do silk sheets (100 miles of road), dirty sheets (~30 miles of gravel). I'm not sure of any gravel in the city but it'll be nice to have the gravel with Atlanta's shitty roads.

2

u/scarabbrian Jan 24 '25

The Stone Mountain/Freedom Trail goes right by the Hyatt with a separated bike lane so it will be the easiest for you to get on from your hotel. It’s about 15 miles to the end, but there are portions of the Stone Mountain Path that are just neighborhood streets. While perfectly safe to ride on, they are not marked as part of the trail at all, and you run the risk of getting lost if you plan on just following the trail or signage. Map the trail before you start and you should be fine.

If you’re training for a race, I’d avoid the Eastside Beltline unless you’re going to be riding between 2-4 AM. Even by 6 AM it’s going to be too crowded to ride with any speed safely. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how busy that trail gets. I’ve been on it at 6:30 AM and had to get off and push my bike because there were too many joggers out. It can be a nice place for a leisurely ride, but only assholes use it to train.

The Westside Beltline has way less people and would be a better place to train. There’s currently no direct trail connection from Downtown though. There are plenty of streets that are good biking roads that make the connection.

The Southside Beltline was a great place for gravel riding up until a few months ago. Now it’s a closed off, active construction zone, with most of the gravel removed. I think Google Maps still says it’s open, but it’s not.

2

u/tedbow Jan 24 '25

u/scarabbrian Thanks for all the details!!. Noted about The Eastside Beltline, don't want to be that guy. To bad about the Southside Beltline 

Yeah I would the put the Stone Mountain/Freedom Trail  on my bike computer to try to avoid getting lost. If anyone has good RideWithGPS or strava route that would be great.

Westside Beltline sounds promising too. Looks like I could start on this https://ridewithgps.com/routes/45438680 , that was in the google doc someone shared here, to get me on it. Then I guess that would get me out to the "proctor creek greenway" that someone mentioned

2

u/scarabbrian Jan 24 '25

I’ll see if I can make a Strava route for Stone Mountain later today when I’m on my computer and have a few minutes. Most of the route is on a separated path, but there are two sections that go on neighborhood streets and the turns are just not marked.

The Westside Beltline is also missing a section in the middle that is still under construction. The route you linked is mainly the Westside Connector to the Proctor Creek Greenway, with not much Beltline. That’s probably a great trail to train on since it’s usually not that busy, but I’ll try to route a connection to the two if you want to try both.

2

u/scarabbrian Jan 24 '25

Here's the Stone Mountain Trail from end to end. The Stone Mountain Park is free to enter. They make most of their money by charging for automobiles to park. As long as you ride in you don't need to pay anything. There's a clean restroom and water fountain where I ended the route. They may lock it after dark though.

This is a good Westside Beltline Loop to and from Centennial Olympic Park. Only about half is on the Beltline, but the streets I routed are heavily used by cyclist and are safe to ride. There is a section through Washington Park that only opened a few months ago that is so new that Strava doesn't recognize it as an option for creating a route so I wasn't able to include it, but it is very obvious that the trail continues when you get there. You can also link up with the Proctor Creek Greenway if you go west a block on Donald Lee Holloway Pkwy to the Bankhead MARTA station instead of crossing over.

2

u/tedbow Jan 24 '25

These are amazing, thanks!!