On Monday night we thought it was a good idea to take Jamie out with us. He’s just got a new road bike for his birthday and is keen to get out on it as much as possible. However after crashing into me at the first roundabout we came to, it transpired he was having similar issues with braking as I was, and so we decided road cycling might be a little bit premature for him. So I was declared ready for an independent cycle and off I set, while Paul took a different, safer, route with Jamie. And I did OK. Did our now usual 10 mile route, and it went quite well, although it’s amazing how much the light is beginning to go in the evenings.

And today I did a longer route with my friend, and new cycling buddy, Amanda. We first met (many) years ago when we worked together as junior doctors, and then discovered each other again in recent years as our sons go to school together. Amanda has done a bit more cycling than me and very kindly offered to come out with me today and it was great. We cycled out past Torrance to Lennoxtown, then back to Strathblane and down past the Carbeth Inn home. Quite a hilly route, which is good practise for me, but there was one particularly nasty hill coming out of Blanefield up to the Carbeth Inn. I could barely breathe, was in the lowest possible gear and travelling at roughly one mile an hour (and ultimately had to give up and get off) while Amanda chatted beside me barely out of breath. Think I still have some cardiovascular work to do.

We got utterly drenched, but the really lovely thing was that we stopped in Strathblane for a coffee and a scone and a chat. This is a very novel thing for me. There is no stopping when you are running. Sometimes you can chat (in my case if I could persuade someone to run as slowly as me) but there is definitely no coffee and scone partaking. This would be almost enough to sway me in the long term from running to cycling, but then again no amount of coffee and scone partaking will ever make up for unrelenting insult suffered by your undercarriage……..