The long, quiet, road to Istanbul.

It always starts the same way, you see something that piques your interest (and you know it’s probably a bit daft to start off with), and then like a seed it takes shape in your mind, growing slowly, developing into something a little more each day. Then all of a sudden you realise you’re losing sleep over it, planning, developing, and simply seeing if it’s feasible in your own mind.

Once that’s done (it nearly always ends with the right outcome) then comes the first crunch - committal. 10 minutes and £165 later, there’s an email informing you that you’ve officially entered the 2014, 2000 mile, Transcontinental race, from London to Istanbul in August.

This will be my 5th bike race ever, the first at age 14 which ended with a real wheel unable to move and the last at age 18 which involved legs unable to go around. And that was nigh-on 2 decades ago. Well, actually it will be my 7th, for some unfathomable reason I’ve signed up for a couple of TT’s with my university in April.

Ok, this is fine, just train hard and it will all go swimmingly. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, my wife could find out about it before I plan to tell her. That’s kind-of a biggie. I’ve got a history with this, it’s all about keeping it on the down-low until plans are fully sorted and everything’s in place.

You see a couple of years ago I cycled LeJogLe in 10 days, and that got me hooked to this cycling malarkey. Then last summer I tried to cycle to Latvia to see my wife without her finding out until I arrived. I didn’t manage that one, but I got to the other side of Poland in 3 days before she found out about it! And she found out about it by Googling my name and seeing that I was tweeting from Poland.

So this stays covert until April! Cheers!

Why April? Well, that’s simple. I’m doing an MBA at the moment, by April I’ll be 6 months in and sitting on a solid pass mark with all the tricky modules and exams completed. Think of it as a reward.

I will be using the esteemed pages of Road.cc to journal my training (how the heck do you train covertly for a 2000 mile race!!), physical and emotional challenges in the lead-up to the race and putting up a race blog as it happens.

So, obviously I smashed the Festive 500? Well no, I got precisely no miles in at all during that time. For the 3rd year in a row I’ve not managed to complete the 500, this time I didn’t even start, family illness meant Wifey was away for 5 days visiting a very poorly granny, leaving me with 3 small boys to look after, and that’s not conducive to riding, so that was out of the window straight away.

Training started slowly after exam week at university back in January. Longer early morning rides, disguised by a new vigour to lose weight. As the days get longer, my work-load changes at uni, and like a perfectly formulated A-Team plan, it will all come together at exactly the right moment!

Happy riding wherever your front wheel takes you!