Sunday 30th December.

20 riders turned up this morning to take part in the last Club Run of 2012. There is not too much evidence (yet) of who received biking presents for Christmas (although possibly a few new Garmins were on display) and we presume that any new bikes will be out once the weather gets warm again. The pre-course route notes suggested that the course today would be "lumpy" - however it was interesting to note that the routemasters (Richard and Mark) were nowhere to be seen this morning.

Chris Preston had the route stored and was happy to lead the group up Crosshall Road in the general direction of Raunds. By the time we were approaching the outskirts of Little Staughton we had split into 2 groups leaving Group 2 with 8 riders. This was soon supplemented by Ian Leadbetter who arrived 10 minutes late at the Market Square and caught up with us on the road to Pertenhall and decided to stay with the group rather than try and catch Group 1.

We picked up Andy Holt on the other side of Kimbolton and David Wilson who had gone "missing" on leaving St Neots took a short cut to catch up with us again at Kimbolton.

So now we were 11 and headed up the hill to Stow Longa and then took the turn for Covington.

At Riseley Ian managed a double puncture at the top of the hill outside the village and having repaired those two, one of them went again within about 3 miles. Ian is clearly making an early bid for the 2013 Puncture King trophy.

Total mileage on the day for Group 2 was 41 at a very comfortable winter pace. The Bushmead Sprint was contested by the recovering Steve Rodley and the 500k Dan Baxter ( see report below).

Group 1 consisted of eleven keen cyclists which included former pace setter Justin Lomas returning after a spell away. Welcome back, Justin. We set off on a route drawn up by Geoff which was led by Joe eager to try out his posh new Garmin. A speedy start saw us cover the miles to Raunds quickly but at the expense of Bomber who decided to drop back to Group 2. Continuing south to Swineshead then Riseley proved hard going into a south westerly wind but a rest was taken as resident puncture king Ade displayed his usual technique of atomising a CO2 cartridge before fixing the problem tyre. With Thurleigh in our sights some eager sorts with rested legs appeared from the back of the bunch to stage a push for the sprint but a diversion further south to Ravensden was planned so we restricted the pace until Colmworth where the sprint resumed with Joe taking the line first. 52 miles at 19mph  average.

New Years Day

A old tradition of the Club was restored today with the first New Years Day run for many years. Thanks to Mark for suggesting this and organisng  the route. 14 of us left the Market Square and included Tim Parish in his St Ives' colours (we might convert him yet) and Alisdair from Gamlingay who is home from University and did not mind riding with so many older riders.

No obvious signs of hangovers amongst the Group as we headed for Tempsford although a few were grateful that the level crossing was down to allow themselves to get ready for the assault on Everton hill. As expected this split the group with a few making it look far too easy. We soon regrouped and then had a very pleasant run towards Gamlingay and Bourn and Caldecote (where we picked up Dan Baxter) across the A428 and then down to Knapwell and over to Hilton.

The weather was superb this morning with the sun shining to take any chill out of the day although the wind at times was head on. The payback when it was on our backs more than made up for this.

The plan was to finish at the Horseshoes in Offord for refreshments - however, it didn't open until 12noon so we decided to add a loop to the route as we would have arrived too early. We kept on at Hilton instead of taking the turn for Graveley and managed to negotiate the usual flood at Hilton before tackling the long drag up to Yelling which stretched a few more legs before we hit the straight at Toseland and the sprint was on for this 2 mile stretch. A few , by their own admission, had gone too early but managed to recover and clearly there was some early training for this years TT already taking place.

We turned right down the hill into Great Paxton and then arrived at the Horseshoes for refreshments to be welcomed by the landlord, Richard Kenendy, who is a keen cyclist and also joined the Club and paid his sub for the year (he was Number 3 for 2013)

Mileage to the Pub from the Market Square was 41 so add on a few more miles for people to get home it was a great start to 2013.

A couple of special mentions :

• Mark Greenhow joined the club recently and lives in Cambourne and by the time he reaches the Market Square has 12 miles on the clock and so keen was he to be on time today he arrived twenty minutes early at 9.10am.
• Dan Baxter completed the Rapha Festive 500 that ran on Strava between Xmas and New Years Eve.  The challenge was to do 500k between the 24th and 31st December and we are told that he surpassed this total comfortably ... well done.