As the Tour de France winds its way through northwestern France today, Kevin Nowlan, the chief executive of Hibernia REIT, will be watching from afar, possibly while holding his backside.

Nowlan, a former Nama official and one-time Ireland rugby international, led a team of eight enthusiastic amateurs a few weeks ago on a tough 640km, four-day charity cycle from Malin Head to Mizen Head. They handed over a nice cheque for €29,000 this week to Liberty Saints, a Dublin inner city rugby team.

“It’s safe to say that a large cushion was needed on my office chair the following Monday [after the cycle],” Nowlan told me. “I don’t know how those guys in the Tour de France do it . . .”

With Nowlan’s sporting heritage, I’m sure the gruelling cycle was no real bother to him, even if Hibernia’s management meetings were standing affairs for a few days afterwards.

The cycling team's long list of sponsors – too long to print – included law firms Eversheds and A&L Goodbody, and the other Goodbody, the stockbrokers.

They’re a sporty lot over at Hibernia, by the way. Nowlan’s chief financial officer, Tom Edwards-Moss, who also completed the cycle, is a former Cambridge rower.

Here’s how his team president described him in the British press in 2001 ahead of the annual race against Oxford: “[Tom is] a nutter, inexperienced but conscious of that and a quick learner. Loves to race and pull hard.”

Great attributes for a cyclist, too, one assumes.