I’m still trying to build fitness my and stamina in preparation for sportives, more cycling holidays in Europe and eventually cycling to India. So each week I’m trying to increase my range by about 10 miles and more hills. Last Friday I did 60 miles from Berwick-upon Tweed to Edinburgh, so I wanted a 70-mile route starting around an hour’s train journey from Edinburgh. The plan is to maroon myself somewhere new one day each week so I must cycle back home. Continue reading →

Until yesterday (Friday 24 April), I’d done no distance-cycling at all this year. That’s zero, nil, nada, zip, SFA. And yet this year I’ll be doing 75 miles of hills in Tour o’ the Borders, then Elly and I hope to have a holiday cycle-touring somewhere in Scotland. Next year we hope to spend several months touring Europe on our iron steeds: maybe the North Sea Cycle Route, maybe the Iron Curtain Trail, maybe a return to the Czech Republic and catching up with the ‘mad Moravians’. Also, for the past month I’ve been feeling weak and lethargic, and unable to keep up with the fast cadences during spinning sessions. So I really need to get my act together.

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So we’ve just done a solstice-night cycle, part of Edinburgh’s Festival of Cycling.

We were started in groups of 20 from Leith Cycle co – Elly and I were in the second group. There were a few hijinks as we rejoined the road at Portobello – a plastic pint of beer narrowly missed one us. Apart from that, the ride was uneventful but at a fairly fast pace for us. (Real roadents may well have left us for dust.) The 18 miles to Gullane took us 1 hour 23 minutes (13mph average).

Tea and yummy cake were waiting for us at Gullane – but so was the rain. Somehow the first group came in after us – I think they took a wrong turning and went through Longniddry village.

The group structure fell apart at Gullane. A number of people wanted to get going, rather than stand around getting cold and wet, so we set off with a hearty shout of ‘Anarchy in East Lothian!’ (Er, that’s me exercising my poetic licence.) The wind was against us and it felt as though we were going slower than before – but we actually took two minutes less to get back. Leading in the dark is weird, especially with the somewhat hypnotic effect of my flashing front lights.

The actual finish, and celebratory breakfast, was in a church further into Leith. Elly decided to simply go home and to her bed but the calories and caffeine lured me. I’m not sure a baked-bean and mushroom roll has ever been so welcome!

I’m quite pleased that we did around 14mph for the uninterrupted parts of the ride. Traffic lights and other impedimenta took our start-to-finish average down to 13·3mph. Here’s the inevitable map. I should join a road-club and see how Lev’s heavy steel frame and my legs compare to roadents’ carbon-fibre speed-beats and thunder-thighs.

Happy second-half-of-solar-year to you all!