Its a while since I have done that route, straight up from Dunfermline to Yetts O Muckhart then down and along the Hillfoots to Bridge Of Allan for a coffee. Its quite a good option when there’s a strong south west wind.
We got there in good time so we decided to go down to Larbert and back by Toryburn (not political, the burning of witches there predates the Tories) and through the ancient village of Culross (pronounced Coo Ross) and the newer village of Crossford back to Dunfermline.
I was really bad about posting pictures from my France trip, but it was amazing. I summited Tourmalet, Ventoux, and Alpe d’Huez (and a few others but these were the big ones). Here are a few highlights:
And then today, I got out on my TT bike. It’s been the dedicated trainer bike for the last 2.5 years, probably because it’s my least favourite bike to ride outside. BUT I’m planning on doing TT provincials next month, so I should actually ride the damn thing. I was working the lunchtime shift at the velodrome so that was my launching pad today. Just an easy ride, getting used to getting in/out of aero, and general handling.
Epic! What did you think of Trek Travel? We’ve thought of doing that in Spain.
Oh, it was our third trip with them. Would 100% recommend. Some of the other people on the trip were returning customers with double digit numbers of trips!
I heard great things about them from a Trek engineer that had just retired - we asked if we could sit at their outside table while at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. But he was biased of course! Seems like a great first trip to Spain.
Don’t be sad regarding the hills, we here in Stockholm, Sweden need to fly 3 hours to see some hills that are longer than 45 seconds 
That is awesome
This wins!!
The Ohio NICA season is in full swing, most of my outdoor rides will look like this Black Swamp Riders practice | GoPro but it’s so cool with these kids.
A faster paced cafe ride today up to Bridge of Earn. Too fast for one of my mates, he trains like a Belgium, ie often and strong and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was worn out. He disappeared on the first climb. We got to the cafe though and we were delighted to see he had went straight there.
Today’s ride although enjoyable was through gritted teeth. My stomach cramped up last night and it feels like I am coming down with something. It was one of the staple easier flatter rides round here, ‘Round the Forth’ and I am quite glad it was. In contrast to the rest of the UK it was damp and drizzly. Oh well rest day tomorrow when its forecast we will actually have the dry heat.
Had to get up City Creek Canyon before it got too hot outside. High of 105 today… 2 degrees shy of our record here in Salt Lake City.
Minuteman Trail, Cambridge, MA, USA
No pics as this unexpectedly turned into a social ride.
I drove to Cambridge this morning to start a week-long business trip. I shifted my workouts around earlier this week so I could do an easy endurance ride after the long drive today. Using everyone’s help on the forum, I decided on the Minuteman multi-use trail.
I swapped handlebars a few days ago and apparently didn’t tighten the stem enough. As I was tightening them along the side of the trail, a cyclist checked on me to see if I needed any help. I told him I was good and he kept riding. Once I finished with my bars I caught up to him to thank him. Turns out he was riding the full length of the Minuteman Trail, as I had planned to do, so we ended up chatting the entire way.
Completely unexpected and a total surprise. What a great way to spend the afternoon. Weather was perfect, too, in the uppers 80s F and low humidity (at least compared to northern Virginia).
Hope you feel better, soon, @HLaB !
A hot ride today to the top of the ski mountain. A lot less people around up here at this time of year!
8.5 hours last week to continue coming back after an early than expected ‘life happens’ off-season.
Monday morning meetings require late morning rides to ‘beat the heat’ LOL. Here is the business end of some tempo with bursts:
But it was too hot for me on the tarmac today:
Plus I slept like crap last night because of the heat.
So I started slowly spinning and dreaming of riding this weekend in cool and temperate and hilly San Luis Obispo. And seeing Santana play live at the Mid State Fair.
Theme song:
Because like those short full gas bursts today:
Well said “divide by 0” (YouTube poster). Well said.
My buddy who flew in from Texas last week departed this morning. In the less than six days he was here, we managed to get in some riding. He arrived Wednesday morning. In the late afternoon, we went out for a short spin (11.7mi and 1100’) so he could get a feel on the loaner gravel bike, an Open WIDE with 40mm tires. He normally rides a full-suspension mountain bike or, more often, a single-speed mountain bike. Thursday morning, we went out for another short spin (12mi, 930’) before an early afternoon train to Zermatt (<4hrs by train) for some gravel.
The view from our hotel of the Matterhorn at 9p (8:55p to be precise) wasn’t terrible as we caught up on the tour after dinner.
Friday morning, after breakfast, we rolled out with a quick pause for a picture under a completely cloudless sky.
The planned route was massive (37 miles, 12k’) and completely aspiration with opportunities to alter and shorten. This is my third time riding here with one of the rides being 23 miles / 6100’, but I took some wrong turns (Garmin outage at the time meant I had to use Komoot but when dripping sweat canceled that route, there was no way to reload the route without stopping the route because it was Komoot…) and I opted to abort and return to base rather than winging it more. (The next morning back in 2020, I went out for a quickie 9.2mi 2200’ ride before breakfast and the train home.) I figured we’d do something similar to the 23-mile ride.
To use an analogy, my buddy’s eyes were bigger than his stomach. Riding on ±13mi courses with total elevation gain in the several hundred feet didn’t really prepare him well for this. Nonetheless, we had a blast, though perhaps in the moment I was enjoying the time more than he.
The ride starts without a warm-up as you jump straight into a climb of 3.3 miles and 1900’ (11%) before a break. The segment is pavement for the third or so before getting into a usually firm but slightly rocky dirt road. This is a ski town, evident not just by the frequent lifts, the guides for skiers, but also the nets. Even in July, there’s skiing, you just have to get higher up to the glacier above and beyond, out of sight.
Most of that first part is in shade, either because it’s early and the sun isn’t hitting the side of the mountain yet or because it’s forest. But then you get out and there is very little shade thereafter until near the bottom at the end of the ride. However, once out of the forest, it’s rare to not see the Matterhorn at any given moment.
The above was near the top of a 1.8mi segment of 14% of often loose trail that reinforced why these trails are primarily occupied by hikers, some of whom walked up but most (as in the vast majority) took a lift up. Though this is mid-July, it’s still early in the summer season, I learned, with the third week, when I went in 2020, the real start of the season with many more people on the trails. It’s not uncommon to see people with their dogs up there, too. Signs make it easy for the hikers, though we can’t really follow these like is often possible near home because of the nature of the trails. (The signs with the two white/one red marks are harder trails for hikers and almost always hike-a-bike so avoid.)
It’s rare to see a gravel bike up there and rarer to see a bike other than an e-mtb, ascend rather than take a lift up. Honestly, the downhill trails might be better enjoyed with shocks. There were steep downhill sections (-16% and steeper but I couldn’t check…) that were dusty and rocky that I was barely hanging on (and wishing for both a dropper and shocks) and the only way down unless we doubled back.
7.6 miles into the ride, with 3500’ of climbing and an average of 8% (and 2:43 into the ride), we stopped for a break. The restaurant was on a “spur” of our trail, so we had a nice climb up and later descent back to our main route. They did have charging points for e-bikes, which were quickly filled after we arrived.
50 minutes later 
we filled our bottles and rolled out, encountered multiplying hikers, and after returning to our main path, onto some welcome downhill.
That took us to a decision point: a steep climb to stay on track to at least get near the peak of Gornergrat (about 10,000’, the terminus of the cog train) if not continuing up to Gornergrat, or opt-out. My buddy was a bit wrecked, so we skipped the further “real” climb and continued up to continue onward. We caught up with a North Carolina couple on e-mtbs, chatted with them, and we ended up leapfrogging each other for a while.
Onward, there were cowbells, of course, but not many. No marmots were seen on this ride.
There are flow trails all over the mountain but we only jumped on two on our return to town. On our first ascent, we rode up and past the start of 3.9mi flow trail with 1600’ of descent. The two we did weren’t that long or steep.
End of the day, it was 17 miles, 4000’, and 3hrs of ride time across 5hrs. He was toast, I felt great.
In the morning, we took the cog train up to Gornergrat for the view (with plenty of marmots sighted from the train) before jumping on the 10:37a train for the 4hr return home. That was Saturday.
Sunday, we drove to Bormio for a ride up Stelvio (again, about four hours). The plan was 43 miles with 7200’, including the climb up Stelvio and then wed jump on the gravel trails at the top and take a gravel route for much of the return to Bormio. This was considered achievable. I did get in a 5k run Sunday morning on my local trails before we packed up and loaded the car.
We rolled at 7a Monday morning to beat the traffic and the heat. I scheduled Stelvio second so we could be there on Monday and avoid the weekend traffic, which worked well. We saw other riders with the same plan and a few nordic or alpine skiers doing dry land “skiing” up the hill, but relatively few cars and trucks for the climb. The climb proper began 1.3 miles into our ride.
The main part of the day was a steady climb of 13 miles and 5100’ (8%), a hare greater than the official Stelvio-from-Bormio climb owing to our start rather than the official start. We weren’t there for records, which was good. He was wrecked.
Fun fact: though I was taking it easy to ride with my buddy – Garmin reported my day as “base” and TR’s says my IF = .68 for the climb – my times on Strava segments on the climb were equal to or several minutes faster than when I did the Gran Fondo Stelvio 6 weeks before on my road bike. Though I was on my gravel bike now and I was on my road bike then, there were 70 miles before the Stelvio, including 20 miles of straight climbing immediately before, and the temp was near and above 90F when I was climbing. Our temp was generally a pleasant low through upper-70s on most of the climb. The temp climbed higher very fast as we neared and reached the top, into 90, but that was fine. At least that was fine for us, not for the many, many riders coming up… or those doing two or all three of the approaches and then some.
With dawn at 5:45a, our 7a start was well lit, though we still had flashers on the front and back, the front being especially good for the tunnels.
Marmots!
Fun times in the two-way tunnels.
The need for breaks meant time for touristing and reading the signs about the WWI battles around here.
No pressure to stop for pictures, too.
There’s more climbing after this sign, not much but this isn’t the finish, so just a brief pause.
We got some tasty venison wurst on traditional brown bread at the top. He’s contemplating why as I look down on the Umbrail pass, the route up from Switzerland.
We decided to forego the gravel and just head down the hill.
There was some “gravel” as I did hop on shoulders on the climb and we jumped on this replaced segment of road (you may be able to see how narrow the road is and infer how tight the turns are) for a 100m or 200m on the descent.
The ride stat of 26.7 miles and 5213’ of climbing is misleading as possibly every foot of climbing was in the first 13.3 miles.
We showered at the hotel, loaded the car, and returned that afternoon for dinner in Zurich. That was Monday, and this morning I dropped him off at 5:35a at the airport and like that his trip was over.
Two Relive videos of the weekend are below.
Zermatt:
Stelvio:
Oh, and of course the cowbell on the Matterhorn ride:
@Scheherazade great riding!
And, last, a Relive video from my 2020 ride up in Zermatt.
