After my bike decided to break its derailleur hanger while I was re-assembling her after the flight--pushing me towards hate in our love/hate relationship--I stole my girlfriend's to squeeze in what turned out not to be a quick ride (not that that's ever a bad thing!). Including myself, we had five whole roadies out today, a truly incredible feat for the St Andrews Road Cycling Club. Some good chat and a nice warm-up out past Morrisons and towards Mt Melville let my tired body get used to her bike (not as long and low as I like, but it did more than fine--in fact it's certainly better than my bike I decided). We slammed into the headwind for miles unfortunately, but with four others to form an effective and fairly respectable pace line made the work a whole lot easier. We turned towards Cupar after passing through Ceres, descended the A916 with rain nipping at our heels the whole time. By the time we turned towards Pitscottie we seemed to be stuck in the middle, but it did begin to let up--only when we decided to lengthen the ride. We spun down the Kemback valley (my favorite) to take the B939 climb, a savage helling-esque climb--albeit without cobbles--when the rain caught back up with us and started to increase I was rueing the fact that I had failed to find the Castelli Gabba rain jersey (look it up, it was literally invented for use in Belgium [by Gabriel Rasch, whose nickname is "Gabba"], which very often has a similar climate to Scotland). With several others to talk to, I found myself not minding the rain as much as I normally would. We decided to do a cobbles blast in celebration of the weather, before a quick climb up St Leonard's Hill and a coffee and ice cream at Janetta's with some more good chat before heading home to make dinner.
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| Tarvit |
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| A916 |
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| A916 |
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| Boys in Strathkinnes |
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| Strathkinness, looking at Guardbridge |
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| End of the ride |
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| Photo: Jamie |
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| Photo: Jamie |
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| Photo: Jamie |
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