Strava, MTB and a sunny day.

It was a lovely spring day today, the sort of day that makes you think that winter might actually be coming to an end (and it's been a very long winter, especially as we pretty much skipped summer last year and went straight from spring to autumn). I've been trying to get out on the bike a bit more of late, I need to build some fitness as I'll be heading off to Scotland in a few weeks. Six days of mountain biking, with a group of mates who can cycle me into the ground!

As an additional motivation to get out there on the bike (and put off the DIY, work etc) I'd joined the Strava Spring Classics Challenge, basically it's to ride the....

"cumulative distance of five of cycling’s most storied races that form the Spring Classics, adding up to a monumental total of 1,319 kilometers or 820 miles."
(For the full details, check out the challenge page in Strava.)

That's a lot of mileage to get through in April. I don't ride on road (where I can avoid it), so they'd be MTB miles.
I'd got a plan of cycling to several of the 'trail hubs' in the area, Margam Park, Afan Argoed, Glyncorrwg and Bryn Betws, the route was more or less planned in my mind and I'd set myself a rough target of 40 miles. It would be a lot of fireroad, but it's the sort of thing my Kona Kula takes in it's stride, despite it really showing it's age. I'm also waiting for my Frameskin tape to arrive to wrap my new Giant in a protective cover (yes I know it's a bike and it's going to get damaged, but...well, you know!)

I've been using the Strava app on my HTC to record my rides, despite fully charging the battery - to my great annoyance - the battery ran out before I'd finished the ride. My route was lost, I checked the phone for GPX files in the hope of finding my route, but nothing. I knew my start time, and the time I got home, plus, I'd ridden sections of the route a few times before so I was able to log the route with a GPX editor to get my distance. But my times were lost, there was no way to be accurate or fair in retrieving these, more frustrating was that I knew I set some fair times on a few segments. I incorrectly thought that Strava needed a 3G signal (in addition to the GPS signal) to work, after reading the battery tips section on Strava, I now know I was wrong! I just hope we get a summer this year so that I can do the route again. This time with 3G turned off and I won't use the camera on the phone, so hopefully it will make the distance.

I surprised myself to be honest, I completed the 38.6 mile ride! It took me 6 hours, a pace that certainly wasn't setting the world alight, but I did set some quite good times towards the start of the route. In my defence, there was over 5000ft of climbing in the route, and it was more about completing the distance than setting quick times.

My aim now is to repeat the route, but with a few additions to top the distance up to the 40+ mile mark, and to do it in a quicker time.

**As a thought, when I saw that the battery was running low, if I'd stopped recording the route, then straight away started a new recording, would the first recording have 'survived' the phone rebooting itself? - that way I'd have only lost the end portion of the ride, rather than all of it. Or maybe I should just get one of those battery booster gadgets you see now.