Tijmen's Bikes and Related Projects

But the problem with that is that the first and last half hour of each ride is a bit of a slog, which also sets a minimum distance for a ride to be "worth" the slog.

Can relate. When I was in SW London, all my pals would ride out of East which was 30km of London traffic for me to the start. So when they'd do a "just 70k on Saturday morning" I'd end up on about 130 by the time I got home. Effort.
Now that I'm in the countryside, the off-road riding is surprisingly worse. My county is super hilly and there's no gravel, just mud which is horrible when wet (most of the time) and bone rattling when dry