Whats Complete

Back in March I decided to enter the Strava "A Classic Challenge from Specialized " and then at the beginning of April I entered the Strava "Ride Hard to Breathe Easy " challenge. The first one challenged people to climb 105,312 feet in 47 days and the second one challenged people to ride 800km in the month of April. On the 16th of April, on the same ride I completed both of these. At the end of this day I had climbed 105,848 ft since the start of the challenge and ridden 838 km in April. Both of these challenges have been completed with 14 days left.

No One Can Be More Amazed Than I

I must say, when I started the climbing challenge I did not think for a moment that I would complete it. I was simply going to give it a go to see how well I could do. With very little experience climbing since starting to ride in Aug 2011, and being a very slow climber I felt it was far beyond my grasp.

I was only a couple of weeks into the challenge and I realised that I had some opportunities to progress by getting up at 4:30am and riding the first hour or two in the dark then I could get in 1,000m + on a ride without impacting on family life, or at least with minimal impact.

The Real Details

To complete the climbing challenge, starting on the 15th of March, I have ridden for 94 hours and 46 mins travelling a total of 1,716 km in just 33 days. That's an average of 2.9 hours of actual riding every day! Yes, it...[...READ MORE...]...