Freshnlo Pedal for Scotland 2013

Susan and I at the start

On Sunday, September 8 I took part in the 2013 Freshnlo Pedal for Scotland, 47 mile challenge ride (there is 110 mile sportive ride) from Glasgow Green to Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.  You can check out the exact route I took on my Strava profile.

The weather forecast had been for rain, but luckily, it turned out to be a nice sunny day!

Everything was very well organised, we put our bikes in the transport lorry at Murrayfield Stadium and got on the organised coach through to Glasgow Green, where we successfully collected our bikes of the truck.

We had booked into the 09:30-10:00 start wave, so we got in the line up of people and moved towards the start line.  Then it was 3-2-1-GO! We started off in a group of maybe 50 people, there was no problem with space.  Some of the roads we cycled along had been closed to traffic and where they were still open there were police directing the traffic and marshals all along the way.  There was also an emergency number you could call if you broke down (bike wise or physically) and you could be picked up.

We got to our first stop at Drumpellier Country Park around 9 miles, which had flown by!  The next stop was the longest stretch at around 23 miles to Avonbridge Station.  Then on to the main lunch stop, which was in the grounds of Linlithgow Palace.  Each of the stops had toilets, first aid and bike maintenance tents, I think some even had massage tents.  The stops had cereal and chocolate bars, bananas, soup, water, the Linlithgow stop had sandwiches and each stop had as much Freshnlow as you could drink! There was a further food stop at Kirkliston Leisure Centre, but we decided to continue on to the finish.

The finish line was very cool, it was inside Murrayfield stadium! On finishing we got a medal and a goody bag, with you guessed it, more milk! Just as well I love milk !

You can view lots more pictures from the entire event on Cycling Scotland’s flickr page.