Christmas Eve and it’s the first day of the Rapha Festive 500! :-) As per my previous post I had a bigger ride pencilled in for today. I was planning on a pre-7am start, but the conditions were poor to the point of being dangerous, so I delayed until 8am for safety.

It was truly grimy out there this morning. Looming grey skies, horizontal rain and blowing an almighty howling gale! The rain subsided after a couple of hours, but the wind was relentless for almost the entire ride. Battling along at crawling pace into a block headwind was not much fun. Total for the day was 150km at a 27kph average.

So an admirable start to the Festive 500, also the December Gran Fondo completed and the best home made sausage roll ever at the cafe stop in Tenderton too.

That’s 30% of the challenge out of the way already!