Students create 62km Strava snowman

Two Dublin students have managed to draw a giant 62km snowman on Strava, mid-way through studying for their first year exams.

Motivated by a desire for cycling fame, and procrastination, first year physics students at UCD (University College Dublin), Simon Jones and Adam O’Reilly, managed to draw the snowman one Friday morning before lunch, after some careful plotting, a couple of practice runs and a failed Santa head.

The pair’s giant snowman, which was plotted by Jones, while O’Reilly did the recording, joins such classics as the New Forest Pony and the avant-garde freehand Santa in the Strava art gallery. It’s pretty much perfect, aside from one wrong turn.

Strava users get artistic

Jones told Sticky Bottle: “I was bored one day just studying – or procrastinating – and I thought it’d be cool to come up with something like that.”

“It was hard to do and it wasn’t my first idea; I tried to do a Santa head around Howth Head but I couldn’t make it work so I ended up with the snowman.”

The course, which the pair rode on Friday 4 December before lunch, presented its own challenges.

“I had to double back a few times and I had a bit of hassle with one-way streets; no matter what I did I had to go down one-way streets,” Jones said.

Thanks to not knowing the city very well they ended up walking past a police station on Pearse Street with the bikes on their shoulders.

There was also one wrong turn in Bailsbridge, South Dublin, which can be seen as a blip on the final route.

Jones said: “Maybe no one will notice but it’s annoying me, I had the map in my Garmin but it didn’t update”. 

"I’ve been dying to be famous for cycling since I took it up three years ago but seeing as I haven’t won a race I had to think of other ways!”