Preparing like a Pro for the Maratona dles Dolomites with VeloViewer

The Maratona dles Dolomites has been on my bucket list since I first heard of it a number of years ago and I’m remarkably excited that 2019 will be the year that I get to do it (hopefully the first of many). Many of those reading this will know of someone who has ridden the Maratona and have heard stories of the joys and challenges of the route. You can also go back to 21st May 2016, when stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia tackled the majority of the route with an extra 77km tagged on the start for good measure.

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3D Printing of your Strava Activities, Segments and Routes

UPDATE 30th Jan 2023: unfortunately PrintMyRoute has shut down so I have removed this feature.  I’m sure most of us have had rides, runs or hikes that we’re proud to have completed and what better way to show them off than a funky 3D print of the profile.  Over the last few years I’ve had numerous conversations with my riding mates about the possibility of doing 3D prints and although they all had fancy 3D printers at their disposal at their engineering jobs, it never got further than that. Fortunately PrintMyRoute stepped up in the summer of 2017 providing this service so now I’ve coded things up so you can easily send your activities, routes and segments straight over to PrintMyRoute direct from VeloViewer wherever you see a 3D profile.

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2018 Etape du Tour, La Marmotte & Maratona dles Dolomites Routes Compared

Photo: Maratona dles Dolomites

The three most famous European gran fondos on most people’s to-do lists are l’Etape du Tour, La Marmotte and the Maratona dles Dolomites.  If this was Gran Fondo Top Trumps each of them would win the hand on at least one aspect.  The Etape wins the “Classic” category, knowing that you are riding the same course (almost) as the Tour de France a short time after; the Marmotte wins on raw “Elevation Gain” (5000m!); the Maratona wins on sheer beauty. Which is the “hardest” probably comes down to the weather on the day and how you ride it but lets take a closer look at the routes and stats:

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Tour de Yorkshire 2017 – Men’s and Women’s Race Routes and Sportive

The 2017 edition of the Tour de Yorkshire very kindly finishes in VeloViewer’s global HQ of Sheffield taking in some of my personal, favourite cycling roads in the process. Here are the details of the 3 stages with the 2nd stage (Tadcaster / Harrogate) also being tackled by the Women’s peloton before the men’s race on the Saturday.

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VeloViewer Explorer Score and Max Square

The VeloViewer Explorer Score and more specifically the Explorer Max Square has acquired a bit of a cult following since its introduction to the site back in March 2015 despite me not having fully explaining what it is all about until now!  The Explorer Score rewards those people who explore new roads/trails rather doing the same old loops. Providing non-performance based motivations has always been one of the main goals of VeloViewer and this one really looks to tick that box.

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2017 La Course Route/Profile

The women’s race that accompanies the men’s Tour de France has previously been a circuit race around the classic Champs-Élysées loop in Paris.  For 2017 the one-day race has moved to the Alps to tackle a section of the men’s 18th stage (the full length of which doubles up as the 2017 Etape du Tour – full details of route here). Here is the full breakdown of the women’s route:

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Tour de France 2017 – L’Etape du Tour – Briançon to Izoard – 180km / 3,400m

L’Etape du Tour is always a classic of an event but for 2017 the parcours is going to provide a really tough challenge.  At almost 180km in length the route begins with a fairly relaxed first 120km taking in a scenic tour of Lac de Serre-Ponçon before tackling the Col de Vars and a tough summit finish of the southern slopes of the Col d’Izoard.  Expect a few hours of crazy huge pelotons until the climbing properly gets underway!

View the full, interactive route here.

Check out my Fly-Through of the route:

Managing your Strava Starred Segments for Garmin Live Segments

In summer 2015 Garmin introduced Live Strava Segments and since then both Mio and Wahoo Fitness have also introduced the feature to their recent devices (full list of supported devices).  Currently the Garmin devices are limited to bringing in just 100 of your starred Strava segments. This resulted in a number of VeloViewer users asking for a quicker way to manage their starred segments when planning trips away as they were going beyond that 100 segment limit. Strava kindly opened up their API for starring segments so I’ve added in the ability to star and unstar segments in every possible location in VeloViewer to make life a bit easier for you.

Wherever you see the star next to a segment you can now press it to toggle its starred state.  These locations are:

I’ve also added a count of your currently starred segments to your Summary page in the header of the “Segment Stats” section which links to your segment list passing the filter to show just the starred segments.

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