Well we made it home on Friday afternoon and after picking up a few bits and pieces from the supermarket we changed and headed out on the bikes.
It appeared that the same sun that shone on us in Venice was making a rare appearance in Carnock and the opportunity to get out for a few miles was too much. A quick text to our fantastic neighbours, Les and Anna, established they were up for coming out so we checked our tyres, oiled the chains and set off up the hill to the bike track. It was great to be out although the sun that shone here appeared to be a colder version of the orange ball that warmed the Venetian people in the overcoats and cycling leggings.
We pedalled off down the path swapping stories of the week that was and poor Les and Anna probably regretted coming out as we bored them with our expensive pizza and ridiculously priced diet cokes. I'm pretty sure Les was looking forward to a post work pint before we wrecked his planned trip to the local pub! The time passed quickly and as ever it was fab to catch up with two of life's great people. We ended up doing a very pleasant 20 miles as the sun began to set catching some of the best views that West Fife has to offer en route.
A Friday night barbecue made the day complete with the whole weekend ahead of us.
I was up early on Saturday to prepare my bike for the days ride. Tyres needed fitted and the bike needed cleaned up. I did the routine maintenance and decided to fit my new speedo - everything was going well until, inexplicably, I fed the tie wrap that was to hold the electronic gizmo to the front fork around a spoke on my bike. Forced to cut it off and with no tie wraps in the house I found an old one in the back of the car just long enough to do the job. My desire to go on Scrapheap Challenge is massive as I love bodging things up so when I don't have all the parts I need I'm in my element! I think this started when I bought my first car, an antique gold Austin Allegro ( that will get you looking on the internet! ), which regularly broke down in odd places. I quickly learned that to own an Austin Allegro you needed to be an innovative bodger and I became pretty good at getting the seemingly bodged Friday Austin back on the road after the frequent break downs!
I'd arranged to meet Derek sharp at 9am at the junction of the road that offers the option to go over Cleish or Knockhill - we selected Cleish and set off with the intention of returning over Knockhill later. It soon became clear that Derek hadn't been feeling great most of the previous week and he was coughing up gunk despite which he lead us out at a cracking pace.
Derek is in great shape and is climbing very strongly so I trailed in his wake as we hammered the pedals up Cleish. The first time I did Cleish was many years ago on an Edinburgh to St Andrews charity bike ride. I hadn't been on a bike for years and dug out my hybrid touring bike for the day. It was a straight handlebar bike that had twist shift for gears changers which I hated and I had bought one day on the basis I needed it for going on bike trips. At the time I'm not sure what bike trips I was thinking about but I bought it anyway.
I started up Cleish not knowing anything about the hill other than the warning about the decent that was on the website of the charity organising the day. Fortunately the bike had many gears including 3 cogs at the front with a ridiculous granny gear that I'm sure some of the DCC boys could have climbed Everest using. For me, at the time it was all I could do to get up Cleish and that was the easy way up! There are fewer better hills for training although we did take a moment to remember the passing of the teacher beneath the icy waters of a loch at the top a few weeks ago.
After a fairly pedestrian decent we headed over to Kinross, Minathort and then over to Yetts. It was a funny day because the wind wasn't that bad but it was pretty persistent and the ride from Milnathort up to Carnbro felt pretty tough in spots. I was in determined mood and took the lead up this section keeping the bike between 24 and 27 kph for the entire climb. It was slightly disappointing that that we were not rewarded with a speedy decent because the wind seemed to nullify the hill making pedalling necessary the whole way down!
The DCC cafe run passed us as Derek nipped into the Co-op for a bottle of water and we quickly got back on the bikes and headed to Tillicoultry and then over to the cycle track to get us home. I am working with Derek on a community project that he is leading in the centre of Dunfermline and we slowed down and blethered about the next steps for the current grant applications. He has done a power of quality work and things are looking good for the planned centre near the bus station.
I needed to get home for 11.30 and we were back well before that giving me an extra few minutes to prepare for the Dunfermline v Cowdenbeath game that I'd been invited too. Back at my house we had biked 70km at a reasonable average with one record split for Derek once he had put his Garmin into his PC.
So back home and time for a bit more focus on the training and routine to be established - ironman is all about preparation, doing the hard graft of training and staying fit. I'm going to get more biking and swimming into the schedule and get myself back where I want to be.
Tomorrow I will do a strength session and a bike session if all goes to plan. I will report in due course......
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