This ride started through in Edinburgh so I travelled through to stay with an old school friend, Simon, and his girlfriend Anna the night before. A big thank you to Anna for a splendid dinner once again - she looked after me before I did the marathon 3 years ago as well!
Simon's friend Ben came along as well for the ride which worked well - the more the merrier! The route started just shy of the Forth Road Bridge before heading out (unsurprisingly, by the name of the route) to Fife through Cowdenbeath, before heading to the coast South of St Andrews and hugging the coast all the way to Newburgh where we headed South and back to Cowdenbeath, the Forth Road Bridge and Dalmeny for a very welcome feast of tea and soup!
The route was not hilly, but undulating with only two proper climbs after about 25 miles and 85 miles. We'd started about 5 minutes late and ended up picking up a number of riders on this climb - Simon and Ben disappearing into the distance as my excess weight (bodily and bikily!) showed.
We kept together throughout the ride and had a really pleasant ride, even meeting up with a couple of guys short of St Andrews and getting into a 5-man team time trial-esque bit of riding for about 8 miles! This was fun but my legs complained too much and we let the two chaps head on in St Andrews while we grabbed some lunch.
Had we know what awaited us another 33km up the road we may well not have done as George and Margaret Berwick put on a wonderful spread of tea and cakes at their house - many thanks indeed. We sat on benches outside enjoying some very welcome rays of sun with a cuppa and some flapjack. This is what Audax is all about! CAKE!
It was around this point that we had started to head back with the wind having had a mild but persistent headwind for the best part of 75 miles. This was some relief and the average picked up from a low of about 14.0mph at 25 miles to 16.1mph by the end of the clocked 131miles.
Many thanks to Simon and Ben for sticking with me today - we worked really well together (though maybe more of them on the front than me for a lot of it) and it was great to have company on the ride for a change.
It's now less than a week before Ian and I head to Majorca for our week of training in the sun (hopefully) and no wind (even more hopefully!). Looking forward to that, I'll tell you.
I'm now half way through my 32 week training schedule for the Tour and have completed 140hrs 36mins training, of which 97hrs 41mins had been on the bike. These 97hrs odd have taken me 1,500miles at an average speed of 15.4mph. So basically, in 16 weeks I've not even cycled 75% of the distance we'll be doing in 23 days. Hmmmm - a little worrying. It is still the most training I've ever done, though - so that must count for something, eh?
Keep the sponsorship rolling in as well folks, we're over £1,400 and counting, but still have a long way to go - if you'd like a sponsorship form to pass round your office/friends/acquaintances/strangers you meet on the street just contact us and we'll e-mail you one.
Matt
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