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So this will become more of a cycling blog moving forwards.

Technology related stuff is going on LinkedIn posts and the new blog on the Internet of Safety (now offline).

For my LinkedIn posts click here.

For my Medium posts click here

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Cycling Road Cycling Travel

Cycling Veloviewer Wheel of Italy Holiday

Really enjoyed riding around Garda earlier in the month. Mata Cycles near Salo are very friendly and helpful and I rented one of their bikes for 3 days. italy-rides

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Cycling Road Cycling

GPX file for RideLondon route

Here is my .gpx file from last years RideLondon 100 in case anyone wants the route for their Garmin. Can’t guarantee it will be the same as this year but it looks like it will be.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55541537/RL2013.gpx

Looking forward to this years event, although the weather forecast looks somewhat interesting at the moment!

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Cycling Road Cycling

#LEJOGON Strava Challenge Achievements

Rather pleased with a few of these achievements gained during LEJOGON:
strava-climbing-challenges

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skratch Labs Stage Race Challenge (just after completing LEJOGON)

 

May Monthly Training Series, again just after completing LEJOGON

 

Cheddar Gorge Climbing Challenge
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Cycling Road Cycling Travel

Visualisation of LEJOGON Route

This is quite a cool way of seeing our route, created by veloviewer.com which does great things with your Strava data.

LEJOGON Veloviewer Wheel
Click for a bigger version
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Cycling Road Cycling Travel

LEJOGON Photos and Videos

I think photos and videos are pretty much complete now – on the Google Photos Album here:

http://bit.ly/lejogon-photos

Real mix of crazy ones, landscapes and lovely MAMIL shots!!!

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Cycling Road Cycling

LEJOGON Stats and Braindump

The below are the totals for the whole challenge.

For individual days and to see the actual route we took see the Strava rides on the right hand side Strava box). We did deviate a bit as we did the Cheddar Gorge route on Day 2 as it was on safer quieter roads, and on some days I navigated on the fly choosing parts of the planned route or using other roads depending on how busy / safe the road was, elevation and directness of other options etc). Also we pushed on to Dingwall instead of stopping at Inverness (partly due to Nick’s amazing effort keeping us at 40kph for 30 mins on the front during Loch Lochy straight which saw Nick take 2nd position and I take 3rd on the Strava rankings for this piece of road!!! And also the highly favourable winds helped too! And good weather allowing for full speed descending (up to 75kph) on nice dry tarmac

Day 7 ended up being the biggest day by far in terms of total combined distance and climbing. . Only exceeded in distance by day 2 and climbing by day 1.

Total Distance = 1,491km or 926 miles – 11 miles more than the route planning suggested! This doesn’t include getting to LE either.

Elevation
18651m or 61190 ft (FYI Mt Everest is 8800m so we did the equivalent of twice up Mt Everest).

Elapsed time (includes stops) TBC
Moving Time TBC

Additional Calories Burnt = 36496

You can see over the days the average speed increasing as we get ourselves more organised and disciplined. Juggling cracking on with taking in the sights was difficult at times but we started to get around this if there was a man out front – if they didn’t get nailed back then they would stop and take pictures whilst waiting for the chain-gang or paced back rider to return.

I have to say I had immense fun once we got organised. Leading out, getting Nick, Anthony and Andy up to speed and taking turns and chasing down other team members whoever was ahead at up to 45kph on the flat was a real buzz. I fear my drivetrain might be shafted though! Later in the week cruising. At around 30kph (20mph) felt almost effortless (probably the tail wind) allowing me to conserve energy for the greater good of the team (although I did have moments on downhill and rolling up and down sections where I went off for some fun as the downhills were epic and dry). Parts of the ride to Oban and down Kirkstone pass (chasing Anthony and Andy as Nick and I set off a bit later) were highlights.

The lowlight on this aspect came just after Gretna Green. I needed to stop but didn’t want to slow everyone down so I had to chase for quite some time in to adverse winds. I think it didn’t help that I tried to catch a tractor to draft which was slightly too quick for me to catch burning up my ability to kick). Also the roads were so straight (and slightly uphill / false flat) that it was demoralising that I couldn’t see the others. I got back in the end but it was hard. When I did we.came across some.guys who had ridden from Portugal with massive amounts of bags. But possibly it was a good bit of training for the later days.

Also my left knee was pretty horrendous for a couple of days pedalling from cold in the saddle was really painful, going up Kirkstone pass was nasty and I had to just spin – only just catching Nick before we got to the top once I had warmed up a bit.

More anecdotes and pictures to follow.

Thanks

Oliver

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Cycling Road Cycling

Photos from LEJOGON

Started to upload the photos from LEJOGON – click here. Might take a while for me to get them all up there.

Now up to £5341 charity donations excluding gift aid which means we’ve hit our target which I am staggered by – but do keep the donations coming if you can! Click here for our charity page

Cheers

Ollie

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Cycling Road Cycling Travel

Lejogon Done!

We did it! More details including stats and all the photos to follow! Some bits on twitter and here is a YouTube of Nick swimming at JoG:

Nick takes a dip after #lejogon: http://youtu.be/lOPr3L_QCys

More soon – still feels surreal that we completed it and that other than feeling a bit tired I am ok!

Cheers

Ollie

Categories
Cycling Road Cycling

change of stopover pushed on to Dingwall

As Anthony has a hard stop of 5.30 tomorrow as he us meeting his wife on one of the islands we decided to push on a bit further and then get up early tomorrow for the best chance of finishing all together. Plan B is that I will support getting Anthony to Jog, plan A is that we work as a team to get there together. We’ll see what happens tomorrow…

Surreal that we have nearly finished.

Dished out some “awards” last night:

Awards
Most improved rider Andy Dalby
Best Bike and Bag for the trip – AW
Best Human Satellite Unlink – NR
Best Strop – me

TEAM award for best angry charge on to an Arran Ferry we thought was leaving without us.