I’ve been neglecting the hills of late so I decided to do the usual Sunday bun run which would mean going up knockhill today. It’s a dull day but light winds meant it wasn’t too bad. Also since I wanted to do 50 miles today I had to tag on a little section to Mossmorran to get the 50. Still a bit tired from yesterday, I could feel it in my legs, so today I wasn’t going to hammer it and kept the avg speed of 15 mph.
It’s a bit of a dull day with a few spots of rain but thankfully low wind speeds and given I wanted to do 60 miles today I had a good opportunity to do so. I kept the route flat and headed for Stirling via the Kincardine bridge. I was head wind for this stage but this was ok and i Kept to a steady 15 mph as to not knacker myself. Once in Stirling I could ride the A91 all the way to Milnathort with a tail wind but I would have to also ride up from Dollar to Muckhart to get back onto level ground again but once up I floored it. I managed to keep a steady 21 mph to Milnathort. Once there I slowed down again as I was pretty tired at this point now reaching the 50 miles mark so the last 10 miles home were back to my avg 15 mph. 63 miles clocked up today (100 km if you prefer) so I’m happy with that
Well today was a better day weather wise, sunny but still windy but thankfully a northerly wind which meant that on my east west route I wouldn’t have to contend with a headwind for 20 miles Did a kind of reverse Sunday bun run ride but skipped out knockhill and went via Saline instead. No faster than yesterdays ride but I still managed to do 50 miles so I’ll take that.
Well now that the snow has gone I can get back out on my bike, last week I was under a foot of snow so no cycling then. Today is a better day but still windy with some rain showers, so I had a tail wind all the way to Clackmannan but a head wind all the way to Ballingry which as usual drained all my energy Thankfully I’m not too far from home at that point so it was a steady pace to home. This of course put my avg speed down to 14 mph and it wasn’t even a hilly ride, anyhow 50 miles knocked out, I’ll see if I can to that again tomorrow.
Well it had snowed through the night, that powdery stuff, so I didn’t ride in the morning I waited until after I had lunch to see if things would improve a bit, unfortunately not really. It’s wasn’t raining/snowing like yesterday this was replaced with hail but it was just as windy So for the first 30 miles i was ok since I had a tailwind but the last 20 miles were brutal! I was riding into a strong headwind with hail in my face, a thousand tiny bee stings on my face. The wind was energy sapping and the last 20 miles my avg speed dropped big time. I had managed to maintain over 17 mph for the first 30 miles but this was wind assisted that last 20 miles dropped it to under 15 mph I was also starting to get cold towards the end of the ride so I was very thankful for a hot shower when I got home.
Wet, Windy and cold with the occasional snow/sleet chucked in for good measure , not the ideal weather for cycling 30 miles was about as much as I was prepared to do.