17th March: A Festive Reminder

This arrived through the post the other day, which was a very welcome surprise: My patch from Rapha for completing their Festive 500 challenge on Strava.

On the reverse of the card that comes with it, the text reads:

"The fifth annual Rapha Festive 500 was a snowflake-studded journey of self-sufficiency, immovable optimism, thousands of heavy legs and an all-conquering Yuletide spirit.

Almost 50,000 brave souls took up the challenge but you were one of the 8,398 who managed to complete it. Congratulations and thank you from everyone at Rapha for making it such a memorable edition. We hope 2015 brings even more victorious kilometres to you and your legs and we’re pleased to include your commemorative badge marking your completion of the 500."

When you extrapolate the numbers, it equates to a mere 1 in 6 success-rate for the challenge, which hit-home that it really is pretty tricky to come-out the other side of it successfully. There are so many things that can prevent you from finishing, from mechanical (which I know too well of from the previous year), injury, running out of time and adverse winter weather.

Now I've managed to complete the challenge, it has ceased to become one as it holds mystery no longer... If you have managed it the once then you know you can achieve it a second time or more.

And LSS still insists that if I go for it another time and end-up disappearing off for large chunks of the day over the Christmas week, then the bike will be dismantled by her and left in its constituent parts at the bottom of the Basingstoke Canal at various points along its length... So here ends my involvement with the Festive 500!

Eat pies.
Drink beer.
Cycle far.