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news
Can you tell what it is yet? David Taylor's New Forest big bike rideNew Strava target for New Forest - as cyclist creates massive 'bicycle' segment
Fancy a big bike ride in the New Forest? Strava user David Taylor has set a new mark with a 301km, 12-hour challenge that takes in a large swathe of the forest and the countryside to the North of Poole and Bournemouth.
The big bike segment was part of Taylor's Tommy Godwin Challenge ride on September 20. The idea is to cover in a day 1/365th of Tommy Godwin's 1939 record of 75,065 miles in a year. That's just under 206 miles; Taylor's 341.5km ride is 212 mile, and included over 2.000m of climbing.
He took 13:02:03 for the full 341km, and 11:26:31 for the 301km segment he's drawn up as a challenge.
Taylor says he had to amend the route as he went along, as a result of a getting a bit navigationally challenged on the way. But as you can see, his route still looks like it's supposed to:
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
Latest Comments
- David9694 6 hours 20 min ago
I hope you're all checking your insurance policies, helmets, test certificates and road tax, it's the 2024 round-up...
- check12 8 hours 1 min ago
200 people out of a close by population of how many? Just build it and stop being a wuss
- Spangly Shiny 9 hours 34 min ago
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
- Rendel Harris 11 hours 55 min ago
And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
- Rendel Harris 12 hours 43 min ago
The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
- bikeman01 14 hours 22 min ago
I love how wannabe racer reviewers talk about fork flex under braking like their tyres are made of glue. I find traction gives long before fork flex.
- hawkinspeter 15 hours 29 min ago
They don't make them like they used to
- LongitudeLatitude 16 hours 19 min ago
Thanks for using my picture of chocolate in your opening picture. The original can be found here, chocolate! | LongitudeLatitude | Flickr.
- lesterama 16 hours 46 min ago
Fair comments. I'll put my hands up and say I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. ¡Feliz navidad! Here's a pic for the season of goodwill.
- Mike Holmes 16 hours 51 min ago
A trip down memory lane (or street) for me - Harry Quinn's bike shop was at the top of our Street and I used to spend time staring at the bikes and...
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22 comments
Chapeau Indeed Mr David Taylor
I honestly have not laughed so much about cycling in a very long time, it is a shame that the cock is not in the new forest?
I get it, do a very long route that no one else will ever follow, then make it public so you can get the KOM, but its okay because you say it is 'Art.' Very convenient, I know your game, I am watching you mister. I am going to take some very 'artistic' routes home, then I will have all of the Kings of the Mountainses, all to my own, ha ha ha ha ha ha.
beautiful - the modern equivalent of those white horses carved into chalk hillsides.
Men are weird!
Brilliant bit of artwork! Is anyone clever enough to change the image so that the bicycle is perfect and the map is distorted?
But did he get the KOM?
Haha, imagine doing that ride, uploading it and finding that someone had already done it, and faster than you!
mmm this has me thinking about previous rides, what have i drawn?
http://www.strava.com/activities/165797257
A butterfly maybe?
I wonder if it was deliberate that the "saddle" is just beneath the Sandy Balls resort on the map?!
Chapeau to him though, I think he's going to have that segment to himself for quite some time!
Fredtastic, just what you want when you are riding somewhere picturesque and peaceful... your head buried froome style in your gps screen while racing imaginary friends.
Looks like a perfect 300km Audax or better still how about Road.cc sportive...
Excellent!
Awesome - I'm not inspired to ride 300km yet but I am inspired to get busy planning my own local "picture route"!
Like this, for instance?
Quite, I mean, this is all very impressive but drawing a cock with Strava is just about the coolest thing anyone can do
Awesome! I'm a forty-four year old man, but I still find a comedy cock drawing hilarious.
He might want to get those wheels trued.
Chapeau!
aweome!!
Thats gonna upsets the New Forest NIMBY's, no end!!!!!
Well done sir! That's a good effort, and while I can manage that average speed for 50-60 miles, doing it for 200+ is quite some effort. I hope he had company.
I tell you what though, he didn't do that with a Garmin 200 - when the routes cross over it gives you no clue as to which line is supposed to be followed next, so it certainly wouldn't look like that if I tried it!