Eek - getting near!

I can't believe it's already almost Thursday, and I'm already almost on my bike...I'm getting butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.

I am so, so glad that the Pedal Scotland race on Sunday went well. That was the real test, to see whether I can actually do the distance I'm planning to do every day for three weeks. There was not a single drop of rain all day and the route was a really interesting one, through bits of Glasgow and Edinburgh (and all the space between) I'd never seen before. I stuffed some extra unnecessary gear into my panniers to make it as similar to my trip load as possible - donned my Lycra padded shorts and synthetic shirt and the hiking boots I'm going to wear on the trip - and all was well.

'The only one small worry' (this has become my catch-phrase;which is especially funny as I NEVER just have 'one' worry, let alone any 'small' ones!) is the saddle that came with the bike. I'll spare you all the details here - but suffice to say, it wasn't exactly brilliantly comfy. I had bought a second-hand Specialized saddle at the Bike Station for £2...but it was water-logged, so I peeled of the outer, dried it and glued it back on, but I'm just not convinced it's the right thing. It's a man's saddle too.

Anyway - enough about saddles. I bought a handle-bar bag today as all searching for a second-hand one were unsuccessful. Also attached my 'horns' onto the handlebars - so I just need to get my drinks holders sorted and clean out the bearings on the back wheel.

The Pedal for Scotland trip left me with some good lessons about my gear and anatomy (!), but it left me with some disturbing images too. We witnessed four accidents; one where an ambulance was already at the scene, another where a young guy did a jump on his bmx and flopped on the ground in a twisted heap, another where a woman had smashed into the windscreen of an oncoming car and another where a girl flipped over her handlebars just a few metres ahead of me. Seeing her go over like that has really stuck with me. I almost saw it in slow motion. What I didn't see at the time was how it happened; apparently she had reached for her phone, dropped it and looked round to see where it was, yanking the handlebars round with her = recipe for disaster and...pretty silly. Had Maria, Pete and I been cycling any closer to her we would have ended up in a big pile-up.

On to happier thoughts - I'll add some pictures from the Pedal Scotland trip.