Category: Cycling

Cycling Mount Dandenong

We are very fortunate to live so close to Mount Dandenong which is a hill just over 600m high to the East of the Melbourne CBD. The various hills in the range form the Dandenong Ranges National Park, the ranges are mainly covered in large trees and ferns forming a ‘temperate Rainforest’ (stole that definition from wikipedia).

Chicken Parma
Parma at Pig and Whistle Tavern

There are a number of roads that criss-cross around and over the hills with some great climbs (then descents) in lovely scenery. There are a few little villages dotted around with some pubs, restaurants and cafes; at the Pig and Whistle Tavern as well as great parmas (Australian “classic” which is schnitzel with tomato, cheese and ham on – just realised now it is a schnitzel pizza…) you can get Old Speckled Hen, London Pride and other English beers. I’ll go through the main cycling climbs on Mt Dandenong and throw in some pictures too.

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Strava Starred Segment Explorer

Since I have moved to Australia i have started using the starred segments in Strava to find climbs and recommended routes to ride but it is a real pain to see where these are located relative to each other. So I decided to knock up a page using the Strava API to do it (the weather was rubbish so i didn’t use up cycling time).

Click Here to give it a go let me know what you think or if you have any issues / ideas in the comments below.

Update 19/09/2018: Now includes segment category filters

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London to Windsor Loop

As my wife and I will be emigrating to Australia (more entries on that to come later) the guys i normal cycle with decided to do what they kindly called a memorial ride – not the nicest choice of names! We decided to do the Strava London route of the London to Windsor Loop. Being January we weren’t expecting the best weather but the forecast wasn’t that bad – just a bit cold. The guys got me a SouthAustralia.com gilet which i was very thankful for the extra warmth.
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Lee Valley Velo Park

Having never been to the London Olympic Park Velo park before I have no had the pleasure of visiting twice in the last 2 weeks. Last night I went to day 2 of the London Six Day event in the velodrome itself and last week my friend and I did an hour session around the flood lit road track on the park.
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Playing with Garmin VIRB video editor

I went for a ride today from flat back to my parents place in Surrey via a few hills. I decided to test out my new action cam mounted on the handlebars and was also playing with the Garmin VIRB Edit video editing software where you can overlay the GPX track of the route onto the video. I haven’t been that adventurous with the overlays yet but the default one seems quite good and has all the main details.

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Leith Hill Octopus + Barhatch Road (twice)

This Saturday I agreed to ride the Leith Hill Octopus, it is an unofficial sportive route which takes in all 8 ascents up Leith Hill in Surrey. Although Box Hill is probably the most famous climb in Surrey following the Olympic road race course Leith Hill is much more challenging and steep. Adding to that is the face the road conditions vary a lot, it is quite narrow and there are steep banks on either side of the road for a large proportion of the routes.
I’ve climbed a few of the routes up before but certainly not all in one ride especially as at least 2 loops of Barhatch Road had been thrown in at the end to add to the pain. This was all training for the other guys I was cycling with to ride the 3 faces of Ventoux in September, unfortunately I can’t make that trip though.

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RideLondon 2017

I was lucky enough to get a place in the ballot for the 100mile RideLondon event this year, this is a closed road sportive following a similar route to the 2012 London Olympic cycle route. Around 30,000 people can take part with both a 100mile and 46 mile route on offer this year. A ballot is run to get places and these are randomly allocated, it is also possible to enter through a charity if you agree to raise a minimum amount. I assume that the charities have to pay a lot for these places but this seems like a similar method to what they use for the marathon events too. This event is actually organised by the same company who run the London Marathon so they have a lot of experience in big events.

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