I Accept the Challenge!

The Rapha 500 Strava Challenge, that is.

On today's ride, fellow teammate (and who I found out about Strava in the first place), Jean, told me there was a new Strava challenge. For those who don't know, Strava is a website that allows you to track your rides (or runs), creating a map, and telling you the distance, time, and elevation gained. It also tells you how you measure up to other Strava users on certain segments of many routes. It will also tell you if you better your own time on a segment from a previous ride. It's a handy website. The way I track my rides is via the iPhone app. You can also use a GPS device such as a Garmin, then download the info to the website.

Periodically, someone, or a company will put up a challenge. Make no mistake, these challenges are not easy (if they were easy, I don't suppose they could call them challenges). Jean completed a difficult challenge of riding 60 hours between the middle of October to the 10th of November. There was another that challenged participants to run 50 km over a specific weekend in early December (I couldn't run 50 km over the course of a whole month--let alone a weekend--but, then again, I'm not the running sort. Running just reminds me how much I like biking.).

Anyway, the Rapha 500 Challenge is to ride 500 km in a time period from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve. That's a fraction over 310 miles...in 7 days...in the middle of winter...in the Pacific Northwest (Too bad Dillon is coming home for Christmas--I could go visit him for that week and do all those miles in the glorious, warm sunshine of Austin, Texas!). Oh, and one of those days is, of course, Christmas. If you have done the math, you will know that means I have to average 44.5 miles per day.

What is the great reward for accomplishing this epic feat? A most awesome...woven patch. Oh, there are some prizes for people who, on the Rapha website, tell the best story about their challenge experience, but most will get...a patch. Well, a patch AND the supreme knowledge that I rose to the challenge and was successful! Yeah, I suppose that is the greater reward (but that patch could be pretty cool...).

So, I have joined this challenge (and so have another 7000+ people so far). Now I hope for temps above freezing along with no snow or ice for those 7 days. It's gonna be epic!