Ride 18/08/2024 Aug Randonee – Cupar

So today was the clubs monthly Randonee and today it was to Cupar, weather wise it’s about the same as yesterday, slightly overcast with some sunny spells, dry, ok temp wise, although it could be chilly when we were riding into the wind, but the biggest issue was said wind 😣 The route was a westerly start with us going to Cupar which meant a great tailwind and on the way home we would be into a headwind 😢 9 of us on the run this morning heading back home to Crossgates to begin with and along the road to Auchtertool and Kirkcaldy. Ken was following us as far as here before heading off on his own route so we said goodbye at this point and carried on. Heading through Coaltown of Wemyss, Buckhaven and Leven before arriving at Largo for our first hill climb of the day. I’ve climbed this hill before so I knew what to expect but performance wise I was not up to par, my PB up this hill is 8 mins, today the most I could manage was 11 mins and that was going as hard as I could manage, it would appear a long road to recovery from here out 😕 Anyway once we were in Largoward we headed North down to Cupar for our cafe stop, the usual soup, coffee and cake were had here before I prepared myself for the slog home. Up till this point I had been leading most of the way since I organised this route and I had the route map, I didn’t want to be leading all the way back I just didn’t have the performance for that so I sat in the bunch all the way back with Paul Mitchell leading all the way back, thanks Paul 😉 although I did get dropped a couple of time but I made it in the end. The route back would take us through Kingskettle, where I warm up sometime when doing the Fife TT races I do, so I knew where I was going off the top of my head at this point, along to Glenrothes and basically the route I would take home from work when I worked in Glenrothes, so I could switch off the route planner and go automatic mode 😀 We would then go through Kinglassie, Lochgelly and along to Cowdenbeath where I would split from the group and head home. So 68 miles clocked up at an avg speed of 16 mph and that was enough for me.