Despite threats of snow or more rainstorms in the weather forecasts, the day of the Wiggle No Excuses Sportive dawned to a clear blue sky; albeit a clear blue sky that had seen the thermometer drop to zero.

Having not sat on a road bike since the aborted 'monsoon club run' of late January, I decided to take the cowardly approach of driving to Huntingdon Race Course to minimise the miles I'd have to complete under my own steam. This had a great deal of 'schoolboy error' potential as my bike had benefited from a comprehensive rebuild courtesy of club mechanic Terry and I had ignored his advice of a shakedown ride to check everything. However, my faith was repaid as the bike rode like a dream, although the carbon saddle was quite a long way from being forgiving on my out of practice backside.

I spotted Bomber in his SNCC Shorts on his way to registration with the other Adrian B and we soon also found several other familiar faces in the form of Stas, Judy, Wayne & Mark. At this point I should make my usual caveat about being terrible with names so apologies to anyone who either gets left out of the report, or possibly gets a mention when they were sat at home watching Swap Shop (or whatever passes for Saturday TV nowadays). The registration process complete we agreed to re-rendezvous in the general direction of the start.

Finding myself in a crowd of several hundred riders I got swept along to the start without seeing a fellow SNCC member until I passed Adrian B who had made it almost a hundred yards before pulling over to the side of the road for a rest (although in fairness there is quite a ramp out of the Race Course up to the A14 roundabout).

Expecting to be swept up by a passing train of green, black & white I kept a steady pace, and despite knowing this part of the route like the back of my hand I still managed to miss the turn off the Kimbolton Road to add the first of my extra few kilometres I would end up riding. I finally spotted a SNCC jersey as we approached Spaldwick at around 15 miles as Mark Colmer and 'his friend' Len were setting a similar pace. Beltons Hill and the Barham Road climb up towards Buckworth spread us out a bit so I again found myself riding alone (with a couple of thousand others).

Amazed that my legs had kept going I passed the Feed Station at Great Gidding and kept going as we went through Thurning, Old Weston, up Catworth Hill and then off westwards to Keyston before heading back onto the more familiar territory of Hargrave and Swineshead. Not wishing to push my luck I pulled up at the second Feed Station at Riseley for a nice warm cuppa and an attempt to break the world record for most fig roles consumed by one man. Thinking to myself that the narrow, heavily parked street was far from ideal for a couple of thousand cyclists to make their way up it soon dawned on me that I'd come out of the stop the wrong way and was blazing my own trail. My time in the Cubs obviously wasn't wasted though as I managed to soon navigate my way back on course, having only ridden three sides of a square but cleverly having avoided Riseley High Street, which I can only imagine would have been nose to tail traffic on a Saturday morning.

With just another 25 miles to go to the finish I began to wonder if I might just make it without a catastrophic bonk and set myself a target time/average speed to aim for - which I ended up making by 20 seconds. A mild twang of cramp on the climb towards Perry could have been much worse than it was, and with the exception of the slog up to Grafham it was a nice finish to the ride. Miraculously, I had ridden the whole way without a p***ture, although I was to learn that not all of us (Ian & Ian - coincidence?) had been so lucky.

An enjoyable and largely uneventful ride for me, although post-ride talk was of a chap festooned in bright pink Rapha kit who, perhaps a bit out of practice, had managed to cause a bit of a crash falling off whilst trying to go up a hill. Andy Mac has strongly denied any involvement and I suppose we should take his word for it, even if I did spot him later that day with a parcel addressed to the 'Rapha Repairs Dept'. Overall, I think that everyone had a good day and that for what seemed like the first time in a long time the gods of weather were kind to us.

Congratulations to Mark, Bomber, Ade B, Judy, Stas, Charles, Christian, Ian B, Ian G, Sharon, David, Paul & Rob for all getting round in good times and an extra special nod to Wayne who thought he'd knock out a quick sportive before heading off to race in the afternoon!

Simon R