"I do not normally do these absurd things," swears Lord Stevenson of Coddenham. Six hours a day for six straight days, the 57-year-old CEO of British financial services firm HBOS pedaled his weary way from Land's End on England's southernmost tip to Lowestoft on the North Sea -- a 500-mile jaunt. "If I had known how dreadful the hills of Devon and Cornwall would be, I would have escaped on foot," he confides sorely.