Anyone even casually glancing at the MyWhoosh Big Ride Challenge Facebook page will have seen posts showing an array of amazing looking cakes. And anyone looking closely might have noticed just how many of them are posted by just one member.
Living in the South-West of England, Graham Nix has been riding for more than 25 years and wherever he goes has a nose for a great café. And it’s not coffee that makes Graham’s perfect mid-ride stop.
“It’ll always be the cake, friends of mine tell me that I’ve got an absolutely wonderful sniffer, I can find them anywhere,” he tells us, a smile obvious even on the phone. “If there’s a café then I’ll try it and I’ve found some stunning ones over the years. I’ve been doing it since early 2000 and I know which ones crop up, but I seem to be able to find them when I’m in France and all the different places.”
It’s certainly no exaggeration to say that Graham is a regular cyclist, but for him it’s not about training, but more about using the bike at every opportunity, whether that be trips to the shops or holidays, and any kind of ride in between. When we spoke, Graham had just collected the family dog from the groomers, towing him there in a trailer behind one of his collection of bikes, stopping at the supermarket, then collecting him for the journey home.
Not a member of a cycling club, Graham rides with friends, alone, but most often with his wife, Joy. Indeed their cycling lives began together when they bought a tandem, way back in 2000.
“We never dreamt what we would end up doing, it was just for poking around here really.” Soon they were spreading their wings, taking the tandem, or single bikes, on holidays all over the UK and Europe.
“We've done some really strong stuff. We've been out to Italy cycling at the Belvedere Bike Hotel. We've been through Lake Garda, we love cycling in France. We've done quite a few tours with people called Green Jersey Cycle Tours, we've done World War One, World War Two, Normandy, Brittany, Loire, and we’re booked to go to Provence next September.”
And when they left the bikes behind to holiday on a cruise, Graham could be found in the ship’s gym, staring at the horizon while riding a static bike!
“Joy would say that I'm obsessed, and I can't have a conversation about anything without having a bike orientated element to it. I ride nearly every day, and apparently I can be grumpy if I haven't been out, because I just want to go out for a ride, and it doesn't matter how far.
“I think one change more recently is that we're not doing big distances, but I try to do at least one 100 kilometre ride a month. I did that for 50 months, and this winter I did it all outside,” Graham says, adding that in previous years some of those rides had been done indoors, a feat in itself.
As for the Big Ride Challenge, Graham has been with us from the start, hitting the target in the second year of the CW5000, the precursor to the MyWhoosh Big Ride Challenge .
“I think I did something like 4,500 the first time. Previous to it I'd never done 5,000, so it was a bit of a push and it was only just, I think it was 5,032 or something, but I was determined to get there because I was so close. But I suppose I'm in the 3,500 to 4,500 mile category, because I won't do anything ultra long. So it did actually push me to get to 5000 because I was determined to get there.”
