D4: Derby-H89, Luton

110 miles

Last day, a treat up at 5.30 to start even earlier to coordinate arrival time

Finally, a pink sunrise as we head south, limbs complaining aggressively for the first hour

Familiar landscape of the gently rolling Midlands, cut hedges & farms

A cheer rings out as we pass into the National Forest & then Northamptonshire, penultimate county

Some atrocious motorist behaviour today; more fool you!

Final stop at a garden centre outside Northampton thinking of the group finale

Darkness falls again and it is head down, immune to pain, knowing we can finish...& there it is!

A swarm of 17 hove into view whooping & cheering with a mass lift of bikes above heads

A predictably unpredictable odyssey of highs & lows with an amazing team

Thank you to all our crew & well-wishers; we turned the pedals but you greased the wheels...

If you dream big, miracles can happen; hard work is the oldest trick in the book!

Day 3: Burnley-Derby

92 miles 0730-1745

Really slow, unpleasant start straight up to Todmorden, feet sodden again

Overhauled uphill by a lady on a mountain bike?  Says it all!

After two hours in, things dried out & we were back to silly jokes again

Accidental but perfect little pause for two minutes at 11am, traffic stopped & total silence in post-industrial Manchester outskirts...led to massive  terrain kickups through Glossop towards Derbyshire.

Eventually dropped into the Midlands by cover of darkness, eight in a line powering through again!

Day 2: Carlisle-Burnley

130kms on the road 0745-1800

Incredible day of landscape through the Lakes & York Moors

Some severely bleak spells across the moors, roads running rivers & howling winds

All boasting sodden feet by lunchtime

Gradients up to 17% testing all of us with 17 happy, tested & jovial faces

Top class food & cheering from the orange angels...

Sponsorship totaliser almost exceeding the terrain & heart-rate monitors

More please...!

D1 Glasgow-Carlisle 170kms

All 17 eagles have landed

It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 5 days to launch.  Part 7: The Hunger Games

‘I don’t have a problem with anabolic steroids, I have a problem with chocolate digestives.’  Kirsty Wade

Woburn: recent stamping ground.  Obliging tiny red stag in the background.  The deer have nothing to fear from me: you hit a deer at speed that's yourself and possibly the deer written off too...

Handy link for D-Day:  Live GPS tracking at http://nedtrack.com/ejg2l/

So, a final discussion before l(a)unch.  Entirely randomly I’ve landed up with the only thing left to discuss (very loosely): food.  See what I did there?  Launch, lunch…oh forget it.

Quieter week for me: half-term means the Empire Strikes Back; a chance to do all the sociable things I have been less able to do.  As the hard work is all done, that's fine.

All work food has long ceased to be of use, which has been a great excuse to ditch it.  There are fringe benefits to all this training.  Need more smoothies, seed mix & tasty salads but I don’t mean I’m necking millet from the pet shop…

One of my musical heroes, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden recently recovered from throat cancer.  Bear with me!  An articulate guy, he described the process of the body rebooting itself after the oppressive regime of chemo as turning him into a ‘metabolic hummingbird’.   This is a very poetic way of describing how tempting it is just to rage through the food cupboard on returning from a ride like a plague of rampaging locusts.  Can we get something decent in first before falling upon the chocolate?  Less hummingbird, more Zombie Thirst.  Appropriate given the season.

I didn't spot it until after the London Hundred this year but after guzzling sticky sweet gels and snacks all the way (jaffas, fig rolls etc) you just start craving something savoury with a bit of salt.  Muscles shutting down…demand salt!   Like jumping into a vat of olives and chorizo.  I don't mind too much after four training rides back-back but I do still feel the call of the Kit-Kat.  We're not monks and if you've earned it, you've earned it.  A slight violation of the 3Cs rule I know.

What…hang on…the 3Cs rule?  Let me explain.  Chips, Crisps & Chocolate.  Capitals.  That’s it, the greatest evils to avoid if you’re that keen.  This wisdom comes from Kirsty Wade; known to me as Aunty Kirsty, veteran of Team GB in middle-distance running in the Barcelona ’92 & Seoul ’88 Olympic Games.  The era of Gunnell, McColgan, Akabusi & Christie.  I’m biased naturally, but I partly grew up on tales of athletic derring-do and proudly went to school in the Barcelona Olympic 1992 GB Squad raincoat, so I picked up a few nuggets along the way, totally disregarded until now.  Disclaimer: for the purposes of this exercise and as far as I’m concerned, the 3Cs does not include cheese, that would be a truly awful sacrifice too far.

Kirsty gives me the best excuse for the weekly inspirational quote: ‘I don’t have a problem with anabolic steroids, I have a problem with chocolate digestives.’  An amazing sound-bite, printed in The Times a few years ago in an excellent article by Matthew Syed.  He wrote a piece on the subject of athletics and its dope-addled 80s.  Which became the dope-addled 90s, which became…you get the message.  It's still going on.  David Millar (a sporting hero of mine) makes a very good recent point in that our noble sport is now the only one that has really had a purge, laid itself bare and is trying to repair.

A friend asked me to accompany them to donate blood this week.  No way!  I think we’re too deep in this world of masochistic daftness as it is, without being a pint down on the start line.  I’ve worked hard on this product and the Blood Service, though honourable, are having none of it.  Since we’re discussing food this week, I registered with the National Blood Service as a student because you got a voucher for a free tub of Ben & Jerry’s.  Which confirms two things: students do have principles…but they’re thinly veiled.  The unexpected fringe benefit was: the subsequent Friday night was a lot cheaper.  That’s all I’m saying.  It is Halloween after all, which gives me an amazing idea for a seasonal blood drive…are you thinking what I’m thinking?

As of now, we are like astronauts in quarantine, training is no longer of any real benefit.  If we can’t do it now, we never will.  The idea being, any last-ditch attempts to cram will only enervate instead of leaving you fresh and elastic.  Theory only….it worked well enough in school for all of us didn’t it?  I will quite enjoy a short breather.

Continuing the space theme…  During a rocking-out period this week Planet Rock played David Bowie’s Space Oddity.  Not too much of a Bowie-ite but the lyrics ring a chord, pre & post next week.  I’m not suggesting it’s a veiled reference to the Tour de France but the first lines could be:

Ground Control to Major Tom

Take your protein pills

and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on

Check ignition and may God's love be with you

 Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff

This is Ground Control to Major Tom

You've really made the grade

And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear

Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

Let’s not mention the lyrics change tack a little at the end.  Good luck team & see you on the start line.  A lot of good progress has been made over the last six weeks on all fronts, so now we just have to go and do it…chapeau comrades!

It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 13 days to launch.  Part 6: Close encounters...

‘Did I apologise to him afterwards?  Of course…we’re cyclists not footballers’ – Vincenzo Nibali, post who-threw-that-waterbottle-gate, 2015 Tour de France.

Length of shadow related to stupidity of wakeup

You know you've picked a good evening when you can chase one of these

Cambridge: obligatory 'Bicycles must not be placed against this building' placing bicycles against building shot

This could be a professional garment; pleasing mass of sponsors.  Great job from the persons responsible.

Universal truths this week: i) waterproof overshoes aren’t; ii) breathable gloves are more likely to suffocate…; iii) a rubbing tyre will wear down even metal surprisingly quickly, back to the drawing-board & iv) the oiliness of a chain is directly proportional to the desire of a little boy to grab it and then rub it on his clothes when you turn your back for a milli-second.

Quick calculation.  Recent training ride of 5hr30mn at an average 90RPM is 29,700 revolutions per knee.  It's a sore point.

Dear friendly chap up top, turn the thermostat down and send some more of that watery stuff while you're at it, we'll take all you can give us.  When consulting my cycling guru & friend Steve about preparing for this escapade he said to me & I quote: 'Glasgow?  November?  Easy, just find your nearest swimming pool, throw the bike in, jump in after it fully clothed and flail about til the lifeguard fishes you out.'

I did say the high pressure couldn't last, definitely a bit of wet weather appreciation this week.  PhD in stating the obvious.  Call it a damp-run for wet weather gear.  In name only.  My waterproof cycling jacket has a design flaw: the tail isn't long enough so your money gets damp.  That's not a euphemism, I really mean it.  The guy at the petrol station looked at the soggy banknote like I'd demanded he empty the till for me pronto: 'It's wet!'….'Yes mate, it's raining, all of me is wet'.  Cue cliched joke about money laundering...  It's a classic film so I've got to crowbar a reference in somewhere, but there's a line in the Shawshank Redemption about the only good money in a prison budget being spent on more bars, more guns & more guards.  We have a similar position going into late October: the only good money is more gore-tex, more lights & more reflectors.  

I had a slightly less productive encounter as well this week.  It gave me a brief glimpse of a post-apocalyptic, war-torn state where pedestrians as well as motorists persecuted renegade cyclists.  Rolling slowly down the high street (an open one-way road) two ladies with a pushchair stepped out in front of me without even looking.  Naturally, I make no noise so I'm not there.  We've all seen this movie.  One of them caught me finally in the corner of an eye and jumped.  'Hi, I'm still here even if you don't look' I snapped, to which she replied equally snappily: '**** off'.  Hilarious.  I was just waiting for the lecture on road tax too.  Naturally, if this happens in broad daylight and I have right of way but the pushchair goes over, it's my fault right?

Deferring to the French, I'm told they have an expression: l'esprit d'escaliers (spirit of the stairs) that refers to all the clever things you should have said in an argument after you've stormed out of the room.  I've never had this confirmed but just imagine how useful.  There were shades of this in play here I'll admit.  Final jokey tribute on this subject.  They say if you don't like someone, you should walk one hundred miles in their shoes; at the end of which, you're one hundred miles away from them...and you have their shoes.  Kudos Spike Milligan for this one; I like passing on a good gag but you have to admit they're an eclectic mix and I do always quote my sources.

Final stimulus this week, a recent cinema trip to see The Program.  That would be the completely true, good vs evil struggle to conceal/uncover the Armstrong doping scandal.  Is whistle-blowing in a cycling context known as bell-ringing?  A gripping battle from mountaintop to courtroom.  Having read the book ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, journalist David Walsh is an absolute hero, not that I dislike his adversary either.  His courage and faith in the face of deceit; remarkable.  Fetch that man an MBE.

One fortnight to go & we are about to lose the clocks so owl mode on.  Bring me that start line.

It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 18 days to launch.  Part 5: RPM vs BPM

“The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked.”  Amy Webster

Cambridgeshire architecture

Steeple Morden, old Cambridgeshire fighter field memorial

If Sky are about the numbers, I'm more about the letters.  Story this week: ASBY BCN BFS FAO CPH BSL ALC NAP; all of which takes care of a lot of training.  Fortunately the last days off were productive, working on the repetitive four rides in four days principle, which wasn't that bad after all.

As of close of play today (Sunday) the weekly totaliser has just crept north of 2000km.  Here's a thought: if all 18 of us cross the line after four days we'll have have clocked up c.7000m or 11,200km.  So we're all due a bit of a shock; however, we have a general absence of work; morale and enthusiasm to help.  Which means two opposite things depending on how you read it.  No pun intended.

News this week.  Well the rosters have been published, which means it is going to happen.  I'll put it on my fridge door and wait for the inevitable changes.  Minor dig.

I did not realize until last week I’d be missing bonfire night when I signed up for this, clearly my internal calendar only runs a fortnight ahead.  I suspect it’s vicarious disappointment at not being able to take two small children to see some fireworks…come to mention it, the last thing this team needs is a child pyromaniac (that’d be me) with an excuse to hold his own early firework party…

Personally, the riding has been going fine and I haven’t despaired when it has been impractical, the rollers just come out of the garage instead.  It’s not quite the same thing, not being a heart-rate intervals guru, but it’ll do for now.  Assuming I am prepared to keep leaping off to attend to a two-year old when he decides he’s stuck/hungry/wants a ball rescuing.  Even after an hour outside, and that was only halfway, your back is steaming visibly and the condensation starts to bead everywhere.  That is the evil of a lot of sedentary flying being purged.  Then followed another hour of a spontaneous invention: rock sprintervals (you cycle to Planet Rock and pick your tempo according to the song they play).  This is akin to Russian Roulette as you have to hope they stay away from speed metal whilst you’re listening.  It’s the regime for those of us that don’t like being bound by anything formal and tend to wander itinerantly, but an excellent way to harness some aggression.  Try it, what stuck in my head…

Foreigner: Cold as Ice – very reminiscent of Eye of The Tiger, which is a classic pre-half-marathon anthem.  We can all respond to a Rocky connection.

Deep Purple: Child in Time - An eleven minute workout in itself, huge shades of light & dark and an insane guitar solo to work to.

Tom Petty: Running Down a Dream - A great Americana road anthem.  The best bit is the ascending guitar solo to inspire you to keep going.

Metallica: Master of Puppets.  You can see I’m wandering into dangerous tempo territory here…a song to inspire you to imagine hot-wiring a monster truck and taking on the last SMIDSY that nearly flattened you out there.  More BPM than RPM; that’s musical beats per minute rather than heartbeats.

Enough of this, it’s a rich seam to mine; I’d be out there with headphones in if I thought it was a good idea.  That’d be a bit too US Postal.

Stay upright & in one piece out there.