Another tough day with riders savaged by headwinds gusting up to 40kmh. No matter in which direction we ride – and we take several turns following charming country backlanes and through normally quiet farming hamlets – it is always the same. Into the wind.

Organisers are saying that so far, it’s been one of the hardest rides yet.

So it happened today. I entered the grumpy zone. About an hour out of Mortlake as the wind lifted, I began to feel decidedly bad tempered. And here’s why.

I’ve discovered I don’t mind camping with 4000 people, lining up for breakfast, queuing up for showers and the toilet, standing in line for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most people are quite polite.

As a well-spoken woman from Balwyn said to me yestereday, bogans “don’t do” 600km bike rides.

The trick, I’ve learnt, is to surrender. I just keep imagining I’m a refugee, or at the Sunbury rock concert back in the seventies.

But when you’re tired and hungry and hot, when you spend every day listening to 3999 people call out “passing on your right”, when your knees are burning and your feet are blistered and your back is aching, it’s the little things that can really drive you mad.

Somewhere on this ride is a person with a distinctive sounding horn on their bike. It’s one of those “honk-honk” things that clowns have in circuses, and that used to be on vintage cars.

I wasn’t even aware of this one until 11 pm last night, when I heard it over the silence of thousands of sleeping tents. “Honk! Honk!”

Then I realised I had been hearing the thing and not really registering it since the start of the ride.

Why does the owner think this is funny, original, clever?

I was deep in the headwind battle this morning when I was blasted out of my silent efforts by “honk honk”.

A smiling idiot in lycra on a bike with tyres as thin as licorice straps pulled out to pass, looked over his shoulder and said to me “yeah baby.” Then I ate his dust.