Early this month it looked like the state of Victoria was going to be sentenced to house arrest again. I quickly got in a long ride that I thought would be my last for a while.
There are only four reasons that we may leave home and whilst one of them is for exercise it seemed for a few days that we would all be restricted to one hour a day within five kilometers of home. That became the reality for the majority – those that live in the big smoke. Out in the sticks we were allowed greater freedom. We can exercise longer and go further.
The prospect of an hour a day got me thinking of how to avoid a crash in my fitness. I resolved to up the intensity making repeated use of a local hill. When all was clarified it still seemed a good time to chase the Strava Climbing Challenge of 7,500m in a month.
I wrote about the phenomenon of Everesting back in May. So this month has been a serial mini-Everesting. (In the interim the rest of the cycling world has moved on to Trenching – 11,034 meters, the depth of the Mariana Trench. Yes, in a day).
Since I wasn’t restricted to 5km I could make use of a better hill than the nearest one. There is a Strava segment not too far away called Devil’s Peak. It sounds more impressive than it is. The segment is on the south side. On the north side there is a steeper section 1.6km long and about 60m high. That section includes another Strava segment with the far less impressive name Dunolly-Avoca Road Climb. I prefer to think of it as The Devil’s Peak North Face. Real hills are a long way away.
So up and down I went. It took seven visits to nail the Strava Climbing Challenge and get my merit badge …
with efforts that looked like this …
And with a week left in the month!
As of yesterday 398,811 people had taken the challenge. My position was 82,002nd. The leader is Lukas Rathgeber who had been out 22 times and notched up 79,028m. He’s in Switzerland. He has real mountains and I suspect extremely strong legs.
A recent Strava innovation is an award for the person who has completed the most runs through a segment in the last 90 days. That makes you the local Legend and you get a set of laurels. Given the population density here in the Goldfields it can take as few as one ride through a segment to become a local legend. Modesty almost prevents me from boasting no fewer than 43 sets of laurels. I have completed the Dunolly-Avoca Road Climb 80 times in the last 90 days, most of them in the last 20 – I think I should get freehold title rather than laurels.
bobmcgee 