Remember remember soggy November, shit weather, crashes and snot – goes the UK riders parody of a well-known children’s nursery rhyme.

Yup, November is my full-blown excuse fest month. The slightest thing can keep me indoors and off the bike. Sainsbury’s delivery? no problem dear, I’ll stay in all day waiting for it in case it comes early. Slight muscle twinge in the calf skipping down the stairs in the morning? – better rest it for the day just incase it flares up into something nasty. Of course sometimes I just look out of the window at the drizzle and next doors plastics recycling bin being blown past the house and suddenly bow to the urge to catch upon some  daytime TV.

In my defence I have had a great excuse for the past few weeks. Due to some long overdue interior remodelling taking place at Carthorse Towers the garage has been jammed full of displaced household furniture and sundry items such as the world biggest collection of single odd sized children’s plimsolls. I’ve been able to see the top of the saddle of my roadbike in the distance poking out from behind an upended bookcase, but actually excavating it would have been much too much like hard work. Besides as I kept telling myself this diy lark was a great undiscovered form of cross-training. Painting ceilings and glossing skirting boards was certainly giving muscles that had laid dormant in my back and legs a highly unpleasant wake up call.

Guilt, however is a corrosive bedfellow. That nagging voice in my inner ear got louder – reminding me about the rash plan I’d formed for Strava domination, an insidious voice whispering  that avoiding riding my bike was not going to send my segment times tumbling and my name shooting up the leader board. As the pile of detritus around my trusty two-wheeled stead diminished and the list of diy must does shortened the pressure from within ratcheted slowly up. Finally one morning last week the time came. I’d gone to my bed telling myself that whatever the next day brought it would not be more broken promises. The bike had been given a careful inspection, (chain quickly wiped free of sawdust and a couple of strokes of the trackpump into both tyres) helmet, gloves and shoes had been found and placed by the bike in readiness. My slightly inclement weather riding attire had been dragged from the back of the drawer and chucked into the corner of the bedroom.

Sure enough the next day dawned wet, windy and with the full spectrum of shades of grey sky common in the North West of England in early November. Fired with almost an evangelical zeal however nothing was going to stop me this morning. Once the wife had left for work and the kids had been ushered off to school my pre-ride preparations swung smoothly into action. Straight after my traditional riding day breakfast had been consumed (large bacon baguette with lots of cheese and ketchup) I was slipping into the winter lycra like a seasoned pro. I’m assuming here that at least some of the ‘seasoned pro’s’ I’m alluding too also have days when their bibshorts are a little tighter than they remembered them and the smell of their not used for a while base layers would scare bluebottles away?  (It can’t just be me surely?)

Finally the moment  came, taking advantage of the builders over the road being distracted by one of their frequent morning tea breaks I took the chance to slip out of the house and away down the road whilst there was nobody to witness my clumsy attempts to mate my feet to pedal bindings. The Strava segment I’m trying to move up on starts a couple of miles down the lane so there’s plenty of time to warm the quads up and get those legs up to their full operating potential.

And hold the back page, shock horror and awe – it’s not as bad out as by excuse ridden subconscious was telling me it would be. Tootling down the lane cautiously reacquainting myself with the grip interface between 23c road tyres and damp leaf infested tarmac I’m joyously reminded of why deep down road cycling will always be my first love despite my frequent dalliances with the dirty world of mountain bikes. After a spring and summer mostly spent having my fillings loosened at Welsh Trail Centres manfully wrestling a turgidly accelerating full suspension MTB up to speed my lovely Ti Sabbath despite being a second-hand eBay bitsa special seems to positively leap down the road in response to every pedal rev that my woefully underprepared legs put through the cranks. For a brief time man and machine are melded into something greater than the sum of their individual parts. I feel empowered, strong, vital, just like a ‘real’ cyclist again – I even allow myself the fleeting notion that I might look the part as well.

The start of the segment looms before me – a gentle left hand bend in the lane before the road opens out into a long straight with a slight incline for the next half mile or so. I’m in the big ring and even manage a short sprint as I pass the invisible start line that my Garmin tells me is there. Dragging up some long ago memory of a time when I used actually train and ride with some sort of purpose my gaze fixes on the road ahead, I get down onto the drops and ignoring the howls of protest from my aching back try to concentrate on maintaining an even cadence. The man and machine in perfect harmony gig starts to unravel as soon as the road begins its gentle rise. With my nose hovering over the handlebars my gaze is helplessly drawn to the speed readout of the Garmin which has begun a slow but remorseless decline. Clicking a couple of cogs up on the rear cassette restores the pedalling rpm but at the cost some velocity. The wind isn’t helping either blowing straight into my streaming eyes as I desperately try to stay hunkered down over the bike in a kind of grotesque homage to Bradley Wiggins famously flat backed super aero-dynamic style.

I’m already aware that this ride probably isn’t going  to trouble my PB but I need to push it just to try to get some kind of handle on the scale of the task ahead of me. The road has now crossed over the local railway line and I get a slight kick of momentum off the downslope on the back of the bridge but it’s no good, I’m tiring rapidly and with my back screaming for mercy my hands resume their more usual position on the top of the brake hoods. The good vibes of just a few miles ago at the start of the ride are now a longed for distant memory. The bike has transformed itself into an uncooperative wayward steed which seems determined to find every pothole in the road, my legs feel like leaden balloons and the less said about my streaming nose the better……..  man is now fighting both machine and his own frailties and losing on both fronts.

In the distance up ahead I can now see the last curve of the lane after which according to the Strava website the virtual finish line lies about 100 yards before the little single track lane meets the busy main road. Gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the ominous cracking sounds from my back and neck I force myself back down on the drops and crouched miserably over the bars click back down the block in the search for more speed.  Nope it’s no good, in the space of barely three miles of maximum effort I’ve blown up really quite spectacularly. I know from the average speed readout of the Garmin that I’m not going to be basking in glory later and the bitter taste of defeat sticks in the back of my throat as I wobble up to the junction and ungracefully clip out of the pedals.

Crouched over the toptube sucking in great drafts of damp November air and really regretting the second half of my bacon baguette another indignity sneaks up to kick me right in the unmentionables. With an elegant swish and the slightest creak of a high-end brake block on an expensive carbon rim two riders sweep effortlessly up to the junction from behind me. One puts stops briefly to take a quick swig from his bidon whilst his riding partner nonchalantly trackstands whilst scanning the traffic on the main road. Bidon boys eyes sweep over me taking encompassing in an instant my sweating face, runny nose and the fact that my bike has a triple chainset.  Correctly recognising that he’s temporarily strayed into the orbit of an inferior being he graces me with a perfunctory of nod \ sneer before the pair of them regally sail out over the junction and disappear.

Resisting the urge to either throw my bike into the hedge or throw up my breakfast I wobble over the junction and set course for home. For a little while bidon boy and  his buddy are visible in the distance, a brief fantasy involving me catching them and inserting my mini pump into one of his none verbal bodily orifices floats through my mind, but I manage to choke down such unworthy thoughts. Even more annoyingly the wind is now perfectly at my back making my less that stellar cross-sectional area a positive advantage and I’m soon spinning along at a brisk 20 mph. Oh well.

So, what was my time? thanks to the mysteries of the digital age as soon as I’m crouched outside my own front door again fumbling with the tensioning straps of my shoes my computer is communing with my phone which is in turn communing with the world-wide wonder web. Bracing myself for bad news I cautiously open the Strava app………. and like the feeling of getting out on the bike in the first place it’s not actually as bad as I feared.

7:58 for the segment, some way behind my 7:10 set back in 2013, but all things considered it could have been worse. Onwards and upwards!