Mint Hill

We’ll ride the extended Mint Hill loop. This is the same course that we did on Memorial Day with rolling hills and light traffic through Mecklenburg – Union - Stanley and Cabarrus counties. This ride leaves from the public lot across the RR tracks from bike shop parking lot in downtown Matthews.

Nicole and I went out on the Memorial Day ride with the group from Bicycles East. This was the third Day in a row that I had to ride. The previous two days were fairly hard, so I knew this would be a little difficult.

Nicole and I had a two very good rides. The first was the Saturday Mid-Morning ride out of Bicycles East in Matthews. That ride can be fast or slow depending on the composition of the group. For the most part it was a fair mix of riders and the weather was good. Thirty-Three miles through Matthews, Mint hill and parts of rural Union County.

JohnD and I went out today to ride a metric century from Mint Hill toward Polkton and back. It was a beautiful day for a ride. Warm and sunny. We had very little traffic going out and with a tailwind and generally downhill route we were able to average nearly 20 mph for the first half of the ride.

This was my first ride with this group and on this route. There is a considerable amount of riding within Matthews and Charlotte, but once out of town you have some very good roads in Cabarrus County and the very northeastern part of Union County. I have included splits for each mile so you can see for yourself when the ride speeds up or slows down. The splits also give you an idea of the elevation gain per mile, red means you are generally going uphill and green downhill. Please note that the elevation changes are not cumulative for the splits.

I decided to go out and try the Bicycles East mid-Saturday morning ride. Today was a beautiful day to be out on the bike. There were about 20 people or so that went out starting from downtown Matthews riding on the edges of Union and Mecklenburg Counties. The creators of this route have done a real good job avoiding the congestion of Matthews, Stallings, Indian Trail and Mint Hill. The route does have just under 900 feet of elevation gain, and there was one climb where I did see a 10% grade. But overall it is just rolling. There was a little bit of wind just before getting to Mint Hill but otherwise the ride is mostly sheltered from the wind.