Ride 22/02/2025 Feb Randonee

18 of us today doing the clubs first Randonee of the year, a 61 miles route to Auchtermuchty and back over a lot of climbing 😁 Weather wise it’s a decent day for February, overcast but with some sunshine, no rain, but where was a strong tailwind to start with, which would make for a fun return. We split into 2 groups with me in the first one heading towards Loch Leven where the shorter route of the day will split from us as we then head for Leslie and up our first hill climb of the day, Falkland. This is technically the biggest climb of the day but we are doing it from the easier side, whereas when I do the hill climb race it’s up from the steeper harder side 😬😰 From here we head to Auchtermuchty for our cafe stop of the day which consisted of a very tasty scrambled egg roll and orange juice. After the cafe stop we were into the strong headwind 😨heading up our second climb of the day Glentarkie. Again this is from the easier side before heading back down to Aberargie and along the A913 heading for Bridge of Earn, in a bloody headwind. We don’t go that far as we turn off for our third climb of the day up Glenfarg, which is a gradual easy climb, depending on how hard you go up of course, which in my attempt to keep up with Paul and Dougie was flat out and as hard as I could go 🥵 Not the smartest thing to do as we still had some more climbing but I made it 😊 We then head for Milnathort via Duncrievie and into Kinross. This is where we had our first split of the group, some people were tired at this point and decided to skip out the last of the climbing and head straight into Kelty and home. I stayed with Paul, Douglie, Alan and Colin as we headed for Cleish and our last hill climb of the day, Knockhill. It was here that everyone in the group decided to go up Cleish hill instead and home from there. I did not, so I was alone from here on doing the last climb of the day over Knockhill and back home from Dunfermline. Suffice to say after clocking up 70 miles at an avg speed of 15 mph and 4500 feet of climbing I’m pretty tired now.