Pedal for Scotland 2010

On September 12^th, myself, Neil, Dean and Gillian (aka Springvalley Riders) and fellow CAACer Susan, cycled the 51 miles from Glasgow to Edinburgh – otherwise known as Pedal for Scotland. This would be the second time I had done this event and was looking forward to it! The neighbours of Springvalley got a rude awakening as we got bikes ready and left at 6:30am on the Sunday morning. We pedalled the 5 miles down to Victoria Park to join the queue for our bus to Glasgow. We could already see that there were many more cyclists than in previous years, as we waited for about an hour just to get on. Plenty of time for Dean to cover his new baby in bubble wrap though! Once at the other end, we eagerly waited for our bikes and joined another queue to get across the start line. This one was much quicker and before we knew it we were off!! We started on Glasgow Green and overtook a few people on Penny Farthings in the first few miles – rather them than me! Once out of the hustle of the city we were onto quieter roads. We were disappointed by the fact the first feed station had run out of food, and the home baking station had a queue a mile long! We decided to push on through to Linlithgow Palace for our lunch, were we would be over half way. We were really lucky with the weather which was sunny most of the way. Neil was enjoying his new road tyres which he’d put on his bike the night before and was cruising along. Unfortunately the two of us got separated from the others at one point and missed out on the giant chocolate muffins at Kirklingston! However, we made up for it with a nice drink at the Cramond Brigg pub with only 6 miles to go. As you can tell, speed was not the aim of the game on this occasion! The last push to the finish line was good, and I for one felt the 51 miles as being much easier than two years ago. We all enjoyed receiving our Pedal for Scotland medal and goody bag at the finish. However, the 5 miles cycling back home were still tough!

There is now a 100 mile Sportive running on the same day, dare we enter this one next year….time will tell.