All things considered, I shouldn't have had any particular worries about not completing the Pedal for Scotland ride, after all I've done that sort of distance plenty of times before. And I did it again on August 27th.
A very early start for me: 6am! I arrived at the railway station in town just after 7am and stood around waiting for the others in my team to turn up. I was doing the event with four other people from my work, at least one of whom was fitter than me, and we intended to stay as a team through the ride. There was a bit of waiting and faffing about with hundreds of cyclists needing to get their bikes into the fleet of lorries, the Stealthmachine went first into one of them so that it would be well protected during the journey, with two sides smooth panel van to two sides bits of other bike. The train journey was uneventful, save having to sit on the floor for most of it because it was so busy. Then it was out into Glasgow and to find our bikes.
There was a route guide in the PfS entry pack and it mostly made sense. I'd followed the route on Google Maps, then cross-referenced it on Google Earth in case any of the road junctions weren't quite as the mapping suggested. Then I'd gone a bit silly and made a scrolling guide out of Lego and attached it to my handlebars. As we rode out of George Square and past the start line, I heard the commentator saying into his microphone, "She's even got satellite tracking on that bike!" Well, I was on a recumbent after all, I already looked unusual!
The pace was relaxed with so many cyclists on the road, and while we had no intention of breaking records, even we found ourselves overtaking people. One tends to forget that for every full-on, lycra clad cyclist with carbon wheels and no luggage who overtook us, there was probably another cyclist who only went out when the weather was good and never rode more than two miles. So while 50 miles isn't to be sniffed at even for me, there are a lot of people for whom this was a real personal challenge. After less than an hour's riding was the first rest stop, so we decided to stop anyway. They were giving away free bananas and chocolate wafers for a start! I hadn't seen any other recumbent bikes so far, and wondered if there were any given the amount of glances mine attracted back in Glasgow, but I spotted a grey Speedmachine, of all bikes, and had to park next to it. I had a brief chat with the owner whose name I forget, but then a man rolled up on a blue trike and it was one of the guys who'd tried out my Windcheetah as part of his buying research with Laid Back. I forget his name too.
Duly refilled and warmed-down, we set out again to pass through Airdrie and east towards Avonbridge where the next stop was. That was a church where they were serving cake and other yummy food, though I ended up chatting to the trike owner again for a while, and then once the others in my team reassembled and we'd decided it was time to move on, they went round one side of the building with their bikes, I went the other, and promptly lost them! I'd assumed I'd got to the road first and waited for them. And waited, and waited. Then I decided to head on up the hill and waited for them again at the top. Eventually I decided that so many cyclists had gone past that they would be miles ahead, so I rejoined the throng and for a change put my foot down (so to speak). With a bit of a tail wind I was flying, and overtook many people who'd passed me ten minutes earlier. After a long downhill and some wonderful corners, I caught my team up, as they were waiting for me! As a complete group once more, we soon arrived in Linlithgow for the lunch stop. Pootling into the playground David called me over; I knew he and Mark were doing the ride on their recumbents but I didn't know when they'd started. So I chatted to them for a while and returned to my group. N returned from the dinnerhall with tubs of hot pasta so we sat in the sun having a jolly nice lunch.
From Linlithgow we pressed on through Winchburgh and Kirkliston, rejoining the usual route back into Edinburgh, with which I'm very familiar. I took the opportunity to have some fun on the long straight, but waited for everyone at the flyover near Cramond Brig, and from there it was a gentle ride along through Barnton and onto the old railway path again and into the park next to Murrayfield Stadium. Smiles all round and a bit of hugging and we joined the long queue to 'deregister' with the organisers. One by one we dispersed and I met up again with David and Mark, and located Kevin who'd also done the ride. We carried on talking about everything and nothing really, and eventually decided to head home as the temperature was dropping a bit. I still had a few miles of uphill to do, and my legs were quite tired. But I made it home, dropped myself into a chair and had a cup of tea.
I covered about 57 miles altogether, on a bike I dared not weigh! I also raised £135 for Leukaemia Research, and I think that made it all worthwhile. I shall probably be doing Pedal for Scotland next year as well.
