A Year Measured in Distance

Every year, the goal is simple: get outside and do something physical.

In an age of computers, AI, and endlessly impressive technology, ( #HeyChat ) it’s easy to forget the body. Life becomes cerebral. We live in our heads; replaying the past, projecting into the future all the while our bodies are quietly carrying us through it all. The body really. keeps the score

Then one day you do something physical and remember: the brain is just a clump of cells among another vast clump of cells (your body) and when they work together, something remarkable happens.

This year was different. I turned forty, and I wanted to mark it intentionally. I already knew that exercise mattered, that being outdoors mattered, but above all, that inhabiting my body mattered. however this time, I wanted structure. I wanted objectives. I wanted something that would run quietly alongside the rest of life in 2025.

The first goal was wild swimming: one hundred swims in the first hundred days of the year, mostly in the Amsterdam canals. I completed that, and wrote about it elsewhere.

Alongside it, I set a second intention:

Cycling.

The plan was modest. Ride two or three times a week. Aim for about forty kilometres per ride. Over the course of a year, that would amount to roughly four thousand kilometres; enough to feel the reality of 4-0-0-0, but not so much that it demanded domination of daily life. I also like “4000” as it reminded me of the idea that we all have 4000 weeks on average.

And at first, it worked exactly as intended.

For the first months of the year, the rides were unremarkable in the best possible way. Forty kilometres became a habit rather than a challenge. The distance accumulated quietly. Without pushing, I found myself slightly ahead of where I needed to be. The structure held. I had a plan, and it was working.

Part of what made that structure possible was where I live. In the Netherlands, cycling isn’t a hobby: it’s infrastructure. The bike fits easily around work, childcare, shopping, and social life. Access removes friction, and friction is often what breaks good intentions.

In April, before the project hardened into obligation, I gave an entire day to the bike. The result just over two hundred kilometres in a single ride. It was expansive and enjoyable ride and this feeling is only possible when time still feels generous.

Then life intervened, as it does.

An unexpected opportunity came up to travel to Sierra Leone. Around the same time, I took a DNA test. turns out that half of my ancestry (my mums) is trackable back as Northwest European from the North West of England/ Wales. No surprise there. The other half was West African, concentrated in a surprisingly small region around Sierra Leone

That stopped me faster than a flat tyre.

Now, I’ve travelled to around 135 countries, yet I’d never been to West Africa. I’d never really thought of it as a destination. Suddenly, I was heading somewhere that felt spiritually, ancestrally, perhaps even physically could feel like (a) home.

As I turned forty, with a son of my own and a growing awareness of time, history came into focus: the UK, Barbados, Sierra Leone and the triangular trade that connected them.

That’s when the cycling project changed.

I decided to cycle the distance of one leg of that trade — from my mother’s birthplace in Walthamstow, London, to my father’s birthplace in Saint Andrew, Barbados.

Six thousand seven hundred and seventy kilometres.

I should be clear about what counted. I cycle a lot generally because we live in the bike capital of the universe. A M S T E R D A M and so think errands, school runs, seeing friends. Those kilometres didn’t belong to this project. This was about intention, not movement. The rides had to be chosen, not incidental.

The remarkable thing was this: by the time I made that decision, I was already on pace. All the early, unremarkable effort meant I was virtually somewhere over the Atlantic without having planned it that way.

But staying on pace would require commitment, and life didn’t slow down to accommodate it.

In late spring, the bike disappeared from my life entirely. Not through lack of motivation, but through mechanical failure and logistics. For nearly three weeks, the cumulative distance barely moved at all.

Time, however, kept counting. Every day I wasn’t riding, the number I was chasing grew larger.

By early July, the gap between where I was and where I needed to be had grown to more than six hundred kilometres. When I finally checked properly at the end of the month, I realised I was roughly six hundred and twenty-six kilometres off the pace.

That moment nearly ended the project. Instead, it forced a different question: not whether I could catch up, but what kind of riding the rest of the year would require.

This project was never meant to be about optimisation. I’d deliberately avoided riding every day. I didn’t want the bike to dominate my life. But now, adaptation was required.

So I changed how I rode.

The hardest effort didn’t arrive as a single dramatic ride. It arrived later, in late August, as a stretch; seven consecutive days where the bike kept reappearing, regardless of fatigue. Nearly four hundred kilometres, not as a spike, but as a sustained response to pressure.

Then by December, the effort compressed further. The rides were closer together. Yes they were slightly longer but they were deliberate and calm. There was no real panic. No last-minute surge. Just a steady closing of distance. I knew I could finish on time as long as I didn’t get ill.

That thought mattered more than I expected. (and i mention this becasue)

My brother caught a strain of influenza and was knocked out for nearly three weeks. He was off work, struggling, confined to his bed. And I felt his frustration and fear, because he had a goal of his own for the year. Watching that happen brought the fragility of the whole project into focus. This wasn’t about motivation anymore. One illness could undo months of effort.

I couldn’t afford that ( not physically, and not for this project.) But there’s only so much you can control.

So, like during COVID, I wore a cheap mask and hoped for the best. Especially on planes. Not on trams, trains, in libraries, or anywhere else – just on planes. #GoFigure.

On the final day of the year, I crossed the total.

With about five hundred metres to go, I stopped and pulled out my phone to record a short message something like,

“In five hundred metres, I’ll reach my virtual Barbados.”

I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

A wave of emotion hit me, not physical exhaustion, not relief from effort, but something deeper. Every hair on my arms and neck stood up. I cried.

It felt transcendent.

The final ride wasn’t a struggle. After thousands of kilometres, it was a victory lap. What overwhelmed me was the meaning I hadn’t fully anticipated. This wasn’t just cycling. This was history, ancestry, time, effort, and intention colliding in a single moment.

No one else could replicate this challenge. Not really. I actually doubt anyone who has ever lived could:

Let me explain.

Very few people will have a mother born in Walthamstow, a father born in Saint Andrew, a fortieth year of life, and the opportunity to connect all of that through movement all while living in a country like the Netherlands, where cycling is so deeply supported. Accessibility is everything.

The distance almost doesn’t matter. The reality of living here:

where we cycle for shopping, daycare drop-offs, and seeing friends means my everyday riding easily ran in to the the five figures over 2025. But those daily kilometres didn’t count. They couldn’t.

This project was about intention.

And on the 31st of December, what mattered wasn’t the total, it was the crossing of that imaginary chequered flag which was perched on a nondescript bench, outside of a farm on the edge of a Dutch village.

This wasn’t a generic challenge. Not a marathon anyone could sign up for. And while I have nothing against those (Noting that I love a good challenge ) this was something deeper.

A personal marathon shaped by my body, my history, my family, and my time.

And when I finished, I realised I’d achieved something far bigger than distance alone.