Badge of honour - Riding the #Festive500

What makes an apparently sane man in his mid-thirties decide to spend part of every day between Christmas and New Year out exposed to the elements daily, frozen, soaked; threatened by miscreant motorists? Even if he's a cyclist, that doesn't fully explain it. Why isn't he on the indoor trainer?

It turns out two equally valid, not to say mildly embarassing, answers apply in my case - a badge, and a fundamental miscalculation.

Over the last year, my saggy middle and I have been getting back into riding on my own account - 2000 miles in 80 days during Mark Beaumont's trip around the world, the Dunwich Dynamo, club rides... I've not ridden so many miles in a year for well over a decade, and this momentum might explain why I became determined to cap it off with a stab at the Rapha #Festive500. 500km accrued between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. The last time I'd coveted a modestly-sized woven badge this much, I was a Cub Scout with empty sleeves.

I quietly made my preparations. It ought not to be too difficult, I concluded. If I could average 25 miles a day for 80 days last summer, then banging out 39 a day during the holidays ought to be in the bag. After all, I'd got Zwift working on our Apple TV. A couple of big nights on the turbo and I'd be laughing. 

Day 1/8 - Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve came. Preparations were complete. We'd chosen, chopped down, re-erected and decorated the Christmas tree. I'd gathered up all my manky pairs of bib shorts from my gym bag, and got them through the wash. We'd been for our annual trip to Handel's Messiah, and a bonus trip to the Nutcracker at Covent Garden; I'd refitted and reinflated my turbo wheel. We'd made the mince pies and got the cake iced; I'd dug the big fan out of the cupboard. We'd bought a 'Basted Turkey' (which Ruth kindly used her new phonics skills to 'sound out' at the top of her voice, to adult sniggers). The children were off to bed, and before I embarked upon the annual game of 'where the heck did I hide the children's presents' which I usually play at about 0100 on 25 December, it was time to drop some miles in the Zwift tin.

Excellent stuff. 25km done, on the trickiest day of the challenge. I was off. Yes, I was a bit behind the average, and I'd had to ride hard to make the distance in the time, (33 points in the red against a suffer score of 32, somehow!) but I'd pull that back.

Day 2/8 - Christmas Day

Christmas morning and my luck was holding - the children didn't wake early and even when they did, they stayed put until we were ready to open presents. Along with half the Western World, we celebrated the birth of the Christ-child by wedging our 'basted turkey' [chortle, again] into the oven and I eyed up the tins of mince pies (neatly sized to be ideal turbo snacks, thought I), before our children started tearing paper and Thomas Ivor disappeared with his Lego, not to be seen again for many hours. The 'basted turkey' [joke still not getting old yet, snort] and its accoutrements were consumed. The Queen spoke to us. We heard the girls' new music boxes play a version of the 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' (with which Tchaikovsky may not have been entirely happy, had he still been alive) - many, many times.

I sneaked a look at Strava and the Festive 500 challenge page. Where on earth were my miles from last night?

Some frantic Googling ensued. To my dismay I rapidly discovered had dropped an enormous, stinking, sweaty, turbo-charged clanger. You see, only outdoor mileage actually counts towards the Festive 500, or indeed any Strava challenge. Rookie mistake.*

Briefly, having rapidly discounted jacking it all in, I was swayed by the (sensible) suggestion that I should stick with my plan, and just satisfy myself with 500km of riding, even if that included virtual rides. It's only a badge. The training would still do me good. Old wounds from never having got anything out of Blue Peter still running deep, the thought of obtaining that little woven trophy won out. 

Time to get some miles on the board, then - I was a day down already, and had the effort of the night before hanging heavy in the legs. There was nothing for it but to head out, while my Christmas present continued to charge, very, very slowly. More on that later.

It was cold. Then it rained. I stopped after five miles, on one of my regular routes out from the house, to put my waterproof on. Before I could complete the task, a lady came out of her house and asked if I was alright. She looked aghast that I was riding at all, in these conditions, on this day of all days, by choice - and I think when I mentioned doing another 40 miles before returning home, she determined that I was properly insane. I got rolling again, balancing the need to keep making progress up the drag towards the A43 with the risk of seeing that 'Basted Turkey' [now contemplated with markedly less amusement] again at the side of the road.

The weather wasn't going to get better, and I grimly churned out the miles, not realising that, thanks to a rogue app switching our Apple Health data, I had gained Katie's gender and birthdate and was coming close to taking some embarrassing 'Queen of the Mountains' pots.

Then my headlight, the one I'd brought because my Christmas present wasn't ready yet, went flat, and I was down to my emergency 'Knog'. Time to call for air support.

Katie was, unsurprisingly, disappointed (to put it mildly) to have to come out to my aid, and I very nearly asked for a lift home, but apart from the shame of giving up, if I wanted that badge, I was going to have to dig rather deeper, accept that my 'phone a friend' card was gone, yet press on. I got myself into Kettering and decided that the railway station seemed as good a place as any to meet, since nobody else would be using it today.

Arriving ahead of the headlight party, I set to, lapping the empty car park so as to keep accruing distance as I waited. I should make a Strava segment out of it - nobody will be able to take the KoM off me for a year! Sure enough, the car eventually hove into view and a swap of headlights later, I followed its rapidly shrinking form out of town, and back onto my regular 'time trial' course towards home, getting properly wet but reassuring myself that this would be worth it - that I had to get some proper distance in at any cost today, if I was to stand a chance of glory on New Year's Eve.

It was on the cycle path near the house, almost within sight of it in fact, that my rear tyre rapidly deflated, at which, like the final scene from 'Cool Runnings', I shouldered the bike, and stopping only to take a selfie, trudged home in my cleats, like a tap dancer with cramp carrying a dead animal home for the pot.

40 miles without any bother and then a few yards on supposedly specialist cycle infrastructure and I pick up a gash in an expensive tyre. Pah.

65.1km for the day; 434.9 to go.

Day 3/8 - Boxing Day

Having turned myself back into a man, I got a run out in the morning, finally able to give my new toy a try. Katie bought me a Cycliq Fly12 combined light and camera unit, but we'd been having trouble persuading it to charge. No sooner was I back out on the road with it, than I caught my first stupid close pass on camera. A run round the 'time trial' course at a reasonable pace for the conditions, got me 29.9km before the rest of the day's business, which was rather more festive, and cheerful.

It was slinging it down with rain by the time I got back on the bike at gone 10 that night. My heart rate monitor wasn't working, my fingers practically froze to the brake levers, and when I got out of town, I had to negotiate floods in the villages, with rainwater and sweat conspiring to take turns to sting my eyes. I retreated to an industrial estate near home to scratch out a little more distance before calling it quits. I uploaded 22.9km to Strava, with the title 'Masochism in a can', after leaving a soggy pile of lycra in the hall and grabbing a much-needed hot shower. The weather warning for impending snowfall didn't make encouraging reading, but I was too tired to dwell on it.

 52.8km on the board; 382.1 to go.

Day 4/8 - No business like snow business

Sure enough, I parted the curtains and was greeted by a dusting of the white stuff. The heavy rain had washed the salt off the roads before turning to snow, so I loaded up with mince pies and got on with it while the roads near our house were still passable with care. Care, however, was what our town's motorists were apparently reluctant to deploy in the circumstances, and twice it fell to my camera, now nicknamed 'Wilson' because I'd started talking to it, to record ridiculously close passes.

It's funny how people react when you pull up alongside them and ask not to be passed at touching distance, with the camera on the bike. The driver of the BMW changed his tenor, and had to go to some lengths to shut his (as gobby as she was ill-informed) wife up, when he realised that not only the incident, but the abuse I'd received from his missus, was 'in the can'. Highway Code rule 163 was certainly an anathema to him, but he conceded that in the conditions, maybe close-passing me when I was using the 'clean' line to find some grip, in a town centre, with oncoming traffic, was a trifle unfair. I'm not sure he would have thought this if it hadn't been Christmas, or if I hadn't had the camera, but hey-ho.

After the second incident, a totally needless cutting up by a young woman who clearly didn't give a stuff about nearly taking me out, but pretended to be very frightened of the nasty man on the bike when I pulled up alongside her and asked why she had to do it, I couldn't get clipped back in. Not before delivering a passable impression of an elongated Matt Stevens, I realised I had ice forming on my cleats, and I retreated to the house for a thaw.

Back on the night shift once more, and the roads I'd previously used on the industrial estate were lethal, the snow and slush having frozen into a perfect surface for 'Bambi on ice'. I headed down one road, which I soon discovered I definitely didn't want to be on, only to realise that I was unable to slow down or perform a U-turn whilst staying upright - electing instead to 'roll with it', literally and metaphorically, until the road levelled off. Time wasted; distance lost - I tottered my way back to the main road with my bike, and proceeded to rattle off some higher-paced runs up and down between two of the roundabouts, on the stretch the HGVs and gritters were keeping clear. With the wind at my back, I was shifting, but the temptation to try for some best times on the segments was tempered by my wish to be able to stop if a lorry pitched up at the roundabout at the end. Bitterly cold, I trailed home with 48.5 km to show for the day. The average I needed to do over the remaining days was still rising, but it was a defiant performance on a day when I otherwise wouldn't have dreamed of riding. "It's a fine line between stupid and clever".

333.6km left to find.

Day 5/8 - They all count!

Yesterday's was the curved ball I couldn't have seen coming, but today's predicament I had known about all along - I had to spend the day on the M5, taking Thomas Ivor to meet his mother en route to Devon for New Year. Given that I had to have some time out of the car (and lunch) in between driving stints there was only one thing for it - finally get to the bottom of whether you can get in and out of Gloucester services on a bicycle. The answer is 'yes, but you might not want to use a Brompton' - the road I'd found on the map was only metalled for a third of its length and the bits that were, were thick with ice and totally untreated. Squeaky bum time and not very good for distance accumulation. When finally I made it onto the main road into Gloucester, the traffic was really rather unkind and I soon resolved to get myself back in the car and home, to get on with the job.

By the time I got home, it was cold, and dark, again. I had Ruth to look after, and so off we went to the bandstand with my tourer. I mean, what sort of home based challenge would this be if I didn't do a lap or two of the 'Secret Squirrel Velodrome'? Ruth, dressed as a Disney princess, helpfully brought her new doctor's kit, as well as her tiara, and stood by a lamppost cheering me on, measuring my blood pressure and giving injections of goodness-knows-what every few laps. The Early Learning Centre's EPO seemed to do the business** but despite her willingness to cheer me on, the little one got cold (unsurprisingly) and we had to retreat to the house. Still, it was more kilometres than I'd have got sat in front of the fire. 8.5 of them, in fact.

Night watchman shift came, and at 2221 on the dot, I headed out in freezing temperatures once more, towards the industrial estate, with no other plan than to ride up and down the main, straight road I'd used the night before, at a sustainable pace (I can't tell you quite how sustainable, because my heart rate monitor had packed up again - my watch said 129bpm average, which is quite enough). I racked up length after mind-numbing length, talking to Wilson until he and I decided Katie would probably have had enough of 'Gray's Anatomy' for one night. I didn't call it well - she'd started another episode not long before I dragged my salt-encrusted bike, and self, through the door...

283.24km to go.

Day 6/8 - Pushing my luck

Today was 'visiting the in-laws' day. Every Christmas should have one, but with my Festive 500 less than half done, I had a quandary. How to break the back of the remaining distance without making a catastrophic and potentially damaging etiquette blunder?

"I'll just leave a little bit ahead of you, and cycle home", I mentioned to Katie, as nonchalantly as I could muster. With a warning about the consequences of attempting to do so too early still ringing in my ears, I stuck the bike on the roof of the car, my cycling clothes (a full set, I hoped) in a holdall in the boot. Katie generously threw in her gloves which, despite being too small, were better than nothing. It still looked somewhat chilly as we set out.

Further up the A14 and M1, there was still snow on the ground, and according to social media posts, Desborough was all but cut off from the rest of the world and was in need of air support. Before I had chance to think too carefully about this, we were north of Leicester, where, as at home, it was clear once more.

Riding on a full stomach is not something I enjoy, but I like eating almost as much as I like cycling (if not more, some days) and it was with a good deal of ingested Christmas cheer, mainly in the form of a roast dinner and chocolate, and some top-ups of the latter stashed away for later, that I set out (later than I'd envisaged, and earlier than Katie thought decent) from my sister-in-law's 'development' (note, not an 'estate'!) in what little remained of the day's light, to cycle home from Nottinghamshire.

All was calm, if not bright, and the roads were clear as I skirted round Loughborough and through Syston. Evading Leicester by sneaking down down its' Eastern flank was the plan, and then roughly to use the A6 corridor, without actually using the A6. So far, so good.

The fly in the ointment was the closure of Café Ventoux, that wonderful cyclists' oasis in the rolling hills of South East Leicestershire, for Christmas, necessitating some foraging if I got hungry. Apart from crossing the A47, the route was so sparsely populated that on a summer's day it is probably a joy to ride, but tonight, it was drudgerous. Did I mention it was cold? I found myself talking to 'Wilson' once more, bemoaning the ridiculousness of the task at hand - grinding out increasingly icy, dispiriting miles, up hill, down dale and via one particularly nasty, jarring pothole, through inky blackness and eery silence.

I'd got to the point where even with the brightness turned right down on my iPhone's screen, the glow from it was impeding my view of the road, such was the depth of the darkness. Attempting to ride with the screen off, with no audible cues, was causing my navigation to get a bit sketchy; the undersized gloves with their supposedly conductive fingertips weren't helping. "No, Strava, I don't want live tracking of my progress along this segment against the KoM. I just want to see where the hell I am. Dimly. OUCH! [Another pothole, hit it before I saw it]. Don't rub them, count them". Wilson responded to my plight only to tell me his battery was running down. The novelty of this ride had rather worn off. Having avoided puking my dinner up thanks to predominantly flat roads, I had duly burned it off; to alleviate the tedium between villages, I'd eaten all my emergency Quality Streets, and was left only with an unappealing, sticky mess in my top tube bag, where three 'After Eight' mints had got squashed into a 'Congealed Twenty Four'. Now I was cold and hungry.

I took one of my periodic glances up from the dicky road surface and suddenly discovered I was at the A6, on the edge of Market Harborough. Civilisation just hit me, not a moment too soon.

On the road, along with euphemisms like the 'Cyclist's Dining Room' (bus shelter), there exists the sheer, unbridled delight I feel upon 'stopping at the next petrol station for food before things get ugly' and discovering it's a BP garage with an M&S Simply Food. The Ivy it ain't, but in the hierarchy of 'I probably should have brought more fuel from home, or hit the keto diet months ago, FEED ME NOW' roadside nutrition offerings, it really does take some beating. Reliable cuisine. Quality, value and choice. A slightly posher grade of factory-farmed butty. That isn't just salmon in your sandwich. That's LOCHMUIR(TM) smoked salmon and cream cheese. It's got an actual name. That will make you cycle so much faster. The irony is that a pre-bonk smash-and-grab raid on a 'Simply Food' will cost you as much as you'd have spent filling your car with diesel there, even at BP's prices.

Turning up in this weather on a bicycle, dressed like a multicoloured, PPE-clad extra from 'Sister Act' in size 15 tap-dancing flippers, at least wins you far more epic points from petrol station attendants than you get from your spouse, or other cyclists. The girl on the counter couldn't even begin to compute the idea that the frozen bloke clearing their shelves of reduced price sandwiches had ridden without a break, from just this side of Nottingham. Unsure about the etiquette of hanging around inside the door of the shop to thaw out whilst eating my haul, I went and stood by my bike, using the adjacent bin and bollard as tables.

Getting back on the bike after a decent break, in the middle of a long ride, can be a difficult thing to do. I managed to make it more difficult for myself because, having finished the 'gloves off, fix something you'd forgotten about, gloves back on, repeat until blessed' routine, I then set Wilson's alarm off, which I'd also forgotten I'd set. This would have been less of a problem, had Wilson not lost his connection to my phone, and I proceeded to draw the attention of the entire forecourt trying to stop Wilson's unjustified and indiscriminate shrieking.

To say I'd not stopped at all to this point wouldn't be quite true, because the gloves, which I didn't dare not keep wearing, made it quite impossible for me to open supplies and the like, whilst rolling. Furthermore, I wanted to keep an eye on the 'poursuivants' in the car. Their dot hadn't moved yet - they were still in Rushcliffe and so another question started to arise. Who would get home first? I was actually in with a shout. Tempted momentarily by the long, straight A6 I'd have used in the car (but which quietly terrified me on the bike, in the dark), I laid into the climb to Market Harborough itself, through the centre of the town. If the Brampton Valley Way was in a fit state, I'd have been laughing at this point, with traffic free path all the way to Northampton, but a road bike, at this time of the year in particular, is sadly no match for the sand, railway ballast and other crap that is considered to be a satisfactory surface by the impecunious Northamptonshire County Council. A path between two towns, that is unlit, only passable on a mountain or 'cross bike, has the tunnels locked off in winter, and which most users drive to, to ride on it recreationally, is but a shadow of the facility it could be if it was passable at a proper pace whilst keeping bike and rider reasonably clean. Anyway, that option not being viable, it was time to head back into the villages, tracing a path towards Desborough, which ought to have thawed out a bit by now, same as everywhere else, right?

By the village of Braybrook, I got my answer - I was back into significant amounts of snow on the ground, and indeed on the road, which had been flooded by the meltwater-augmented River Jordan to a depth of, if not Biblical proportions, then a bit more than bottom-bracket deep. I took a run-up, unclipped my feet and freewheeled through it, trying not to think about what it might be doing to my bearings.

Having entered Northamptonshire, and not the promised land, it quickly became apparent that the snow really was much worse. Snow which had melted and re-frozen was the new enemy. In fact, the ice was so bad that I temporarily forgot how cold I was. Progress became painfully slow as my squeaky bum and I teetered, slipped and slid up a narrowing, darkening, lane, taking us out into the countryside with only the glow on the horizon of Kettering to confirm that I was getting any nearer to home.

"I bet the rest of the team are gliding along the M1 now, in the warm, eh, Wilson?"

Wilson, as ever, was keeping his counsel. He was probably cheesed off that if I binned the bike on the ice now, the footage would be unwatchable, no matter how spectacular my unseating, and his submission to 'Fails and Bails' would be worthless.

Tempted to turn back, it occurred to me that getting back down this hill on such an unpredictable and slick surface was going to be even less fun, and so I pressed on to the next crossroads to take stock and see if I could get back onto treated roads, no matter how busy. Once more, the darkness had conspired with the weather to make the 'scenic route' anything but what I wanted.

As I approached the junction, I got something of a shock. A road closure sign on my route dead ahead,  which was to avoid Desborough, get me over the A14 and onto familiar roads, might not have deterred me had the surface looked if anything, worse than what I'd just decided was unacceptable. That was one thing. The other was the caravan  sat on the verge.

Stopping at where the white line would have been if the tarmac had been visible, diagonally across the crossroads was a touring caravan. The door was wide open; the curtains fluttering menacingly in the breeze, picked out by the really rather eery moonlight. "What the actual..." I thought, daring not even to speak to Wilson at this point, although hoping he wasn't about to record me meeting an horrific end in something that looked like a Tim Burton film. I decided there was nothing for it but to bravely (and quietly, trying not to draw attention) run away, away from the closed road, away from the spooky caravan and back towards Desborough, the A6, and civilisation.

Over the A6 I went, the road not improving as fast as I would like, and for a moment I contemplated scrambling down the bank and choosing the risk of being wiped up at 80mph by an Audi driver over the likely outcomes of continuing through the shadow of the valley of frozen slush. Arriving in Desborough itself, it became quickly apparent that yes, they had indeed had more snow than everyone else, and that the only viable route to get me home was now to use the main road through Rothwell and Kettering. I ended up retracing part of my route from Christmas day, but this time had no choice but to use the main A43 at Prologis Park, because, predictably, nobody had gritted, or cleared, the cycle paths around the nasty junctions there. A bloke in a Mercedes very nearly got a swarf-ridden cleat up his door when he tried to squeeze me off the road, and Wilson learned a few new words.

185.98km left

Day 7/8 - Accidentally Dropped

Not enough sleep later, with a fresh load of mince pies in my top tube bag, I was down at Wellingborough Cycles to pick up the regular club ride, figuring that some company might be handy, if only to help me stay awake, and perhaps provide a bit of a tow.

It seems that there was a mix-up as we departed, because a couple of miles after we diverged from the planned route I'd looked up, stopping for a puncture amongst a group that was pushing me really rather hard, it dawned on me, and a couple of the other riders, that we had somehow joined a different, faster, group, which was going for a much longer ride than we'd expected. I wasn't going to keep up - but undaunted by miles on my own after yesterday's foray, and with the benefit of daylight and no snow, I started making up a route of my own, back home. Coming into Hanslope I found just the pub for me!

Unfortunately, the Watts Arms was closed, and I had to generate my own, stopping at a shop with a sign outside proclaiming 'hot food'. What it should have said was 'hot food next week'. Rather miffed and reduced to a haul of chocolate bars and Lucozade Sport, I got on with the task at hand, eschewing the scenic route for the main A509 back towards home. I hollered a number of Audis' registration numbers at Wilson, who was keeping himself to himself as ever but taking it all in, I hoped. Late back to the house and unpopular; my porridge had gone cold. Mrs J was not at all keen on my proposal that she went for a day out to my proposed destination the next day (King's Lynn) - in fact her response nearly hit me with crockery attached. 

The result was in the balance. Would I choose my marriage or the bike?

66.93km done - 119.05 to take the prize!

Day 8/8 - Who moved my road?

Ever the pragmatic optimist, I figured if I got up early enough, I could rattle out 75 miles, be home in time for lunch, and everyone would be happy. I was, of course, badly wrong.

With a tail wind, I stuck with my plan to head for Norfolk, saving a bail-out option or two on Strava just in case. At least an hour or so after the time I'd told myself I'd be rolling, I was heading through town.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I take 'Road Closed' signs with a pinch of salt when I'm cycling, figuring that at the very worst, there will be a way through involving a detour, a dismount; a brief bit of shouldering, perhaps. Generally speaking, it takes more than a road closure to cause me to change route wholesale. It was with this 'devil-may-care' attitude that I headed towards Irthlingborough along the road which, although closed, I had traversed on a club ride, just before the work (related to a big new development to the East of Wellingborough) had commenced. As I made progress beyond the signs, all seemed to be going rather well - I enjoyed a freshly surfaced, wide road with not a soul to be seen anywhere. There were even bus stops for imaginary buses to call at!

I was in for something of a shock, however. A few hundred yards further on, where the line of the road had been totally erased from the landscape - and the replacement hadn't happened, yet. I never imagined that white cycling shoes with SPD-SL cleats would work well for cyclocross, and do you know? I was right! Worse still, I didn't have a Scooby where the road was supposed to go, or how much of it was missing - in the end, I had to resort to using a satellite image to try and find the road. This was having a rather negative effect upon my average speed and Norfolk seemed if anything to be getting further away as time passed.

When, eventually, I got myself back on the tarmac, my joy turned out to be short-lived. Strava, in its' crowd-sourced, data-driven infinite wisdom, had routed me up the cycle path through Stanwick Lakes - the only real alternative to a scary run along the A45 dual carriageway. My bike was going to get muddy, to add to the accumulation of other crap from the last few days on salty roads.

About a mile in, the grotty, bumpy path (too early in the day to start dropping tyre pressures) was flooded - up to bottom bracket depth and beyond. There was a current running sideways across the path, the actual route of which was indistinguishable.

I got to one particular lake, with a river running through it at quite some pace. There were Mountain Bikers on 29ers actually turning round and giving it up as a bad job, as I accelerated, unclipped, said a silent prayer, and sailed through, legs akimbo, hoping beyond hope that, beneath the milky brown water, the machinery remained between the greenery. The last thing I needed was a baptism - would Wilson even survive one? Mercifully, with some one-legged half-pedalling to keep me going, I made it through, and took stock of the situation whilst hiding under the A14 flyover at Thrapston to get out of the rain and demolish some mince pies.

What followed, as the weather improved its' spirits somewhat, was the setting for a really pleasant, low intensity, summer bike ride into the fens with the children and some panniers. Obviously, without the panniers, the touring bike, the children or the summer time - but I made mental note to check out the roads towards Alconbury when I got home, for future use on a nicer day, in company. With the wind at my back, it was just a case of keeping pedalling - giving my tired legs nothing too taxing to do, without affording them the kind of let-up that would give them chance to start thinking about making a fuss. We've got this.

A quick petrol station stop for more pretty dismal and predictable fuel, at Ramsey, and I was off again, and yes, the legs were complaining after a taste, however short, of inactivity. Ironstone had given way to flint churches; rolling, flattening terrain gave way to big sky country, and down the Fenland drains I went, tucked in as if time trialling, to make the most of every joule of energy at my disposal - a new PB for sixty miles coming as an unexpected bonus but not proving quite enough to get me to Downham Market in time for the rather infrequent train service. About the only place open to me for refreshment was Greggs, outside which I rather nervously left my bike, with Wilson's alarm guarding it, while I procured some welcome, if totally unsuitable, nutrition.

Back at the station, I procured my ticket and hung around for my train to Cambridge, which turned out to be a crammed 'Electrostar' with people not only standing but also sitting in the bike space, all of whom seemed vaguely disgusted (with various degrees of disclosure in my direction) by my vaguely aromatic and inescapably sizeable presence. As the journey progressed, I was afforded the core exercise of trying to keep myself, and my bike, upright and rooted to the spot, with nothing to hang onto; I must be honest, after best part of an hour of this game, I may have retaliated slightly towards the Audi driver (he just had to be) who'd spent the entire journey tutting at me and very rudely talking to his wife about how much he detested cyclists - through my rear triangle, no less, by blowing him a post-Greggs 'gastric kiss', filtered through my sweaty bib shorts, as I left the train.

A dash across to the stopping train in the bay platform at Cambridge and finally I was laughing. Bike in the space, the tip-down seat next to it was not only empty but fully functioning, and I had the train to myself. Moments before departure, that all changed and I spent the rest of my journey to Hitchin listening to two young lads, clearly already well oiled, telling one another just how battered they were going to get on their New Year's Eve trip to London, and ringing several of their mates to do likewise.

What with all the diversions, I'd gone right off the boil so far as the cycling was concerned. Slightly startled by the cold, I wobbled off into the turning circle at Hitchin station, struggling to fail to clip in, much to the amusement of the queue at the taxi rank. Eventually I got rolling and got a swift, and rude, reminder of how the standard of driving deteriorates as you near the M25. I was glad to pick up the back road to Luton, until, upon joining it, I realised that I'd gone from a tailwind in Norfolk to a headwind on the edge of the Chilterns.

I wasn't just relying on these miles to get me home, of course. I still needed them before midnight for that elusive cloth badge - more to the point, 'lunchtime' was hours ago, and I was concerned I was in danger of my Strava beacon being used by a process server to bring me a notice of proceedings. Luckily, or possibly otherwise, Katie had taken the girls to her parents' house, but I tried to focus on the task at hand, and chased much harder than I felt I should have done to catch and pass an elderly man on a touring bike going my way. Actually, I had to do it twice. And that wasn't even to be my final navigational cock-up of the day.

Cresting a hilltop, I took in the vista of Luton Airport, my next destination for the day, before losing sight of it as I got nearer, descending back into urban sprawl and the roads round the Vauxhall factory. Aggressive traffic and an ambiguous 'straight on' from the iPhone left me turning round on a roundabout and nearly taken out by a moron in a Jag who had assumed that, contrary to my clear signal, I must be going to Asda. I was so glad to reach the station in one piece that I almost forgot to celebrate getting over the line!

It was with some difficulty that I purchased the split ticket required to get the journey from Luton Airport Parkway to Wellingborough back down to a reasonable price from a booking clerk who, inexplicably, seemed totally disinterested in the adventure I was returning from. Suitably deflated, I made my way out to the platform and took some celebratory pictures. I even took Wilson's picture, capturing him being his usual effervescent self.

All that remained was to stick my bike on the train (unusually for this journey, a trusty HST with a proper bike space!)

Epilogue

* You thought I'd forgotten about the asterisk, hadn't you - well, it was a while ago, wasn't it! The cruel, cruel postscript to this is that in late January 2018, Strava started allowing virtual rides on Zwift to count towards certain challenges. As you can imagine, having been through purgatory, I am now dead against this, when it comes to the Rapha Festive 500. That just wouldn't be cricket - would it?

**Family ByCycle does not endorse the administering of EPO to, or by, infants. A very wheezy and breathless Daddy might have had three squirts of Ventolin at one sitting, in the dim and distant past, but isn't even risking that any more. They came for Team Sky, we must be well up the hit-list after them.