There was a pause in Perth’s South Inch park to refuel and use the municipal toilets.

All Leved up and miles to roll!

Then Lev and I turned south towards Edinburgh. I could see a range of hills between us and home. (Lev can’t see, despite sometimes having a mind of his own.) The gradient turned nasty just south of Bridge of Earn. I could hardly trun Lev’s pedals, even though I suspect the gradient was little more than 10%. Unlike spinning or turbo training (not that I do that – yet!), you can’t stop turning at the bottom of each pedal-stroke because you’ll fall over if you do. So we ground our way up to Glenfarg, me cursing my lack of strength and decision to do this bloody cycling thing most of the way.

At Glenfarg, an NCN sign indicated that the route went to the right (south-east), presumably via more hills. So we ignored that and carried on along the main road (B996) until it met the A91, the main road from St Andrews to the M90. There was a sign indicating a cycle-route around the east side of Loch Lomond, so we took that. There was lots more grunting and peching as we went through villages on the lower slopes of the Lomond hills until we reached Ballingry. I think it was about here that my bluetooth headphones ran out of juice – the rest of the journey was not powered by music.

We stopped there to buy water – I’d drained half of my camel – and a bread roll, and confim to Elly that I was still alive, then set off southwards again. The route took us through Lochgelly (memorable for road surfaces almost as bad as Leith Walk), Cowdenbeath and onto Crossgates. From there, I could see hills the other side of the Forth – we were so near I could taste the diet Irn Bru! However, another set of undulations (they’re not big enough to call them hills) lay between my legs and home. So we tottered through south Fife into Inverkeithing.

There’s a cyclepath though Inverkeithing to the Forth Road Bridge, mostly downhill. Lev and I passed someone being treated by the emergency services, blood all over his face and screaming in pain near the way onto the bridge – we don’t recommend taking the final turn at any speed. The bridge implores cyclists not to do more than 15mph. It’s hard not to obey this on the way up its curve, but very easy to disobey when going down. Afterwards, there’s cyclepath all the way to Edinburgh’s city centre. Most of the stretch along this part of the A90 has been relatively recently rennovated – smooth tarmac apart from the annnoying occassional rumble strip.

The path goes through the back streets of Cramond and Barnton – Lev and I were held up by a taxi blocking the route, so got back onto Queensferry road for the final couple of miles. It’s fun to try to sprint using the impetus of drops and rises from Quality Street junction to the Dean Bridge. Unladen, we have hit 30mph on level roads. This time, I guess we probably didn’t reach 20mph, but Lev was laden and I was tired.

Overall we did 65 miles in 5 hours 12 minutes of pedalling time, so that’s 12·56 mph on average – better than last week’s 11·07 mph average. There was hardly any backside-pain and no chafing of the unmentionables, and I was able to spin the next day with little ill effect, just a little ache in my right hip. So I’m getting more confident about stringing together several long-distance days. Next week’s challenge might be cycling to Glasgow and back: no train journey, over 80 miles, almost guaranteed head-wind on the outward journey and a long slow uphill drag through West Lothian. And Lev’s about to get new two-sided SPD pedals because I’m bored with looking down to get his left combination (one side flat, other side SPD clip) pedal into the correct orientation every time we start off – it’s boring and it takes my eyes off the road.

Here’s the cyclemeter details.

Split miles	Ride Time	Stopped Time	Average Speed mph	Fastest Speed mph	Calories kJ	Ascent feet	Descent feet
5.00	22:42	7:15	13.21	22.28	1103	229	76
10.00	19:55	7:32	15.06	25.39	895	177	272
15.00	16:55	0:22	17.73	21.75	1122	34	0
20.00	18:20	2:23	16.36	23.45	1010	34	108
25.00	25:05	20:27	11.96	20.62	1043	267	143
30.00	29:20	6:49	10.23	19.83	1027	467	81
35.00	23:27	6:54	12.79	29.40	876	240	302
40.00	25:51	2:09	11.60	20.69	939	138	196
45.00	29:24	33:58	10.20	19.95	1047	356	227
50.00	21:37	1:16	13.88	22.32	937	79	229
55.00	21:42	3:14	13.82	27.50	830	224	364
60.00	28:08	0:56	10.66	24.37	1086	344	382
65.00	27:38	3:42	10.86	23.41	982	200	238
65.35	2:03	1:12	10.34	11.56	80	82	23

Range mph	Ride Time		Distance miles	Stopped Time	Average Speed mph	Fastest Speed mph	Energy Burn kJ	Ascent feet	Descent feet
0.00 – 6.21	34:31	11%	4.51	1:29:44	4.84	6.20	821	1070	239
6.21 – 12.43	2:11:34	42%	21.17	8:19	9.45	12.43	4948	1537	270
12.43 – 18.64	2:00:20	39%	30.77	0:08	15.34	18.63	6006	266	1127
18.64 – 24.85	23:38	8%	7.98	0:00	20.27	24.61	1158	0	772
24.85 – 31.07	2:05	1%	0.92	0:00	26.50	29.40	44	0	234