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Strava announces Box Hill challenge

Speed up the Olympic climb and win

Think you're quick uphill? The folks at informal competition site Strava are inviting you to prove it by zooming up Box Hill as fast as you can  - or, if sheer volume of suffering floats your boat, as many times as you can.

Strava's Box Hill Beat the Best Challenge runs from July 21 to August 4 and will reward the three fastest men and women up the iconic Surrey climb, plus the three men and three women who make the most attempts at the ascent.

With an average grade of 5 percent, Box Hill is 1.6 miles long and gains 411ft. The Olympic men's road race will climb it nine times, the women's twice.

To get on the Box Hill Challenge, get yourself over to Strava.

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.

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5 comments

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Municipal Waste | 11 years ago
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 39 You'd think Strava's insurance company would be the ones to put a stop to this one, considering getting sued in America over someone dying because they were basically being encouraged to race on a public road...

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riddoch | 11 years ago
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Its a shame the zig zag road is shut from the 25th till the 30th of July., still enough days to set a time though.

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notfastenough | 11 years ago
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Off-topic, but I could well see that happening. It would be nice to see someone standing up to LOCOG. They a local florist take a novelty 5-ring flower arrangement down off the front of the shop - she only did it because the torch was coming through. Legally, couldn't you argue fair use or something? Or add a comedy element and argue satire?

Box hill a bit too far for me to try this unfortunately...

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I wonder how long it'll take LOCOG to shut this down as Strava aren't an Olympic sponsor...  39

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pjt201 replied to drheaton | 11 years ago
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drheaton wrote:

I wonder how long it'll take LOCOG to shut this down as Strava aren't an Olympic sponsor...  39

on what basis will they close it down? it makes no reference to the Olympics whatsoever.

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