As a resident of Yorkshire for the last 28 years it is incredibly exciting to have this year’s biggest one-day races play out on its roads. For two years I lived in Harrogate while riding and racing as a Junior and made the most of the exceptional riding both on and off road, right on the doorstep. The 2019 World Champs road race and time trial courses all finish in Harrogate but start in different Yorkshire locations bringing the racing to the whole region and different styles of racing to each race. Let’s check out the routes for the main races.
VeloViewer Explorer – a GPS Selfie
In August I was contacted by Karl Andersson, an MA student of Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Unviversität Berlin who was doing a project on the VeloViewer Explorer functionality along with how and why people use it. The link to his survey was shared and many of the most devoted Explorers responded. Karl has now published his findings and also produced a lovely video compiled from interviews carried out with a couple of the Explorers.
The paper is available to download for free here.
I like Yorick’s Cluster growth shown in the video so much I’ve converted it to an animated gif (to pre-empt the comments, I’ll take a look at automating the generation of gif’s of your own maps at some point in the future!):
Karl also came up with the initial idea of the “Max Square” which he tweeted about way back in 2015:
Personal challenge: My biggest filled square in @VeloViewer Explorer is now 20 tiles on each side. Thanks @Ben_Lowe! pic.twitter.com/K2bC9r2Xjs
— Karl Andersson (@karlberlin) November 8, 2015
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.
About the VeloViewer WorldTour Package
As well as the public facing side of VeloViewer which lets us mere mortals view all of our Strava activity history and segment info in lots of engaging and motivational ways, there is also a package offered to the top level men’s and women’s professional cycling teams to help the staff and riders prepare effectively for their races and provide real-time info on the courses during the races themselves. It is currently being used by 14 men’s WorldTour teams, 5 UCI women’s teams and 6 national teams.
History
Back in 2015 I heard that the classic VeloViewer 3D profiles were being used by a number of WorldTour team DS’s for race briefings including at Team Sky. For the 2016 season VeloViewer became an Official Supplier to Team Sky as I worked closely with their DS’s to build up the beginnings of my WorldTour package. Continue reading
2018 UCI World Road Race Courses – Innsbruck (Men’s and Women’s)
Unsurprisingly, with the 2018 World Champs being in the heart of the Austrian Alps, the routes for the road races include a whole heap of climbing. 4700m of climbing over 260km for the men and 2500m over 155km for the women.
3D Printing of your Strava Activities, Segments and Routes
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.
Men’s and Women’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics Road Race Courses
The Tokyo Olympics Men’s and Women’s road race courses have just been announced. I’ll let others debate the differences between the two courses and instead just provide the stats and maps.
2018 Etape du Tour, La Marmotte & Maratona dles Dolomites Routes Compared
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:
Updated 100 Climbs / “Segment Hunter” Strava Leaderboards
The result of GDPR and some related Strava API changes meant I’ve had to completely change the way the 100 Climbs leaderboards (and other club specific, “Segment Hunter” leaderboards) are populated and I’m happy to say, after a month of being offline, they are back!
Trans-Madeira 2018
5 days of Enduro MTB riding and racing on the wonderful island of Madeira, what’s not to love about that?!
