For most people, the thought of cycling 79 miles is nothing short of a nightmare.

But try telling that to Anthony Hoyte, from Cheltenham, who hopped on his bicycle and racked up that exact distance for a very Christmassy reason.

No, his handlebars weren't covered in tinsel and he certainly didn't swap his helmet for antlers, rather he designed his route to absolute perfection.

Like many, Hoyte uses an app that tracks his mileage - in this case Strava - and draws out his exact route on a map using GPS.

And that's exactly what Hoyte took advantage of, deciding to turn his route graphic into the shape of a massive virtual reindeer.

Reindeer-tracing ride

The exhausting ride across London traced the antlers, head, facial features and neck of the animal with remarkable accuracy.

You only need to look at the preciseness of the reindeer's eye, plotted between Kilburn and Wembley, to appreciate the amount of preparation that went into it.

And that's not to mention the time. Hoyte's ride, which had termini of Kensington and Bloomsbury,  took a whopping nine hours and featured 3,564 foot of elevation gain.

History of Christmas rides

However, this isn't the first time that Hoyte has drawn London-wide images with his bicycle.

The cyclist began the tradition in 2017 by creating the outline of a snowman and upped the ante the following year with a Father Christmas-shaped route.

Hoyte told BBC News: "I've made a rod for my own back in that it's become a tradition.

"Everyone is saying, 'what's it going to be this year?' I just spend a lot of time looking at maps, and.... waiting for things to jump out at you." 

Considering his latest cycle has gone viral across the country, you can guarantee they'll be local interest at the very least for his first Christmassy image of the 2020s. 

Either that, or he's out of ideas and spoke too soon. Come on, we had to get at least one cycling pun in there.