Not every Strava user can match the KOMs set by the likes of Laurens ten Dam, who hit 60 kilometres an hour as the Tour de France headed into London in July, but here’s an interesting challenge raised by road.cc reader Simon Greenway – ride every street in your home town.
Simon lives in Romsey, and on 3rd January criss-crossed the roads of the Hampshire town, clocking up a metric century on the way. In internet parlance though, depending where you live, YMMV – your mileage may vary.
What we mean by that is some of you live in small towns you can whip around in an hour or so, while others, in places like London, may find it a tougher gig, so you might want to restrict it to your local borough, or a local council ward.
And even somewhere smaller you may find yourself faced with something such as the nightmare 1 in 3 hill pictured below, in the home town of one of the road.cc team, which could put you off the challenge in the first place.
It’s certainly dissuading the writer from attempting it …

But, if you do choose to take up the challenge, make sure you are signed up to the road.cc group on Strava, and tag your ride with HometownChallenge – let’s see how we all get on!

























16 thoughts on “Hometown Challenge – ride your local roads, and post to Strava”
I almost did this when I was
I almost did this when I was recovering from my cancer 🙂 I’d go out when able and toddle around the local streets just to stop myself from going stir crazy.
Might give this a go, after I’ve completed the latest climbing challenge on Strava and come back from my winter holiday in Tenerife 🙂
Interesting challenge….
Interesting challenge….
Riding? That’s a bit soft,
Riding? That’s a bit soft, isn’t it?
https://congestionzone.wordpress.com
DavidC wrote:Riding? That’s a
I think Phyllis Pearsall got there first with that one.
looks like a lot of roads in
looks like a lot of roads in romsey not ridden there.
Minor observation – I live in
Minor observation – I live in the middle of a large ‘estate’ type area. Whilst I have my privacy settings on so that 500m around my house is private, if I ride every road in the area surely the blanked-out parts of the route will make a lovely circle that centres on my house?
Gizmo_ wrote:Minor
I had realised the same just from ordinary rides, so I have multiple privacy zones set up meaning there isn’t an obvious blank spot with my house being the centre. I also have the same around my office as I commute to work and the same situation could occur.
mbrads72 wrote:Gizmo_
Good idea – hadn’t occurred to me that you could have two overlapping areas.
Gizmo_ wrote:
Good idea –
What I do is set a privacy zone that isn’t centred on my house but does include it.
I wish you could manually draw your own polygonal zone, or at least adjust teh size of the zone, so you can keep any local segments you are interested in out of the zone, but exclude everything else that might hint at your home/office location.
I’ve done this in a small
I’ve done this in a small neighboring city to mine. My city of Cuyahoga Falls, OH has 185 miles of road within its borders. I’d probably end up doing a triple century with all the overlapping needed to do it.
http://www.strava.com/activities/64650797
Gizmo_ wrote:Minor
Not quite. Strava only trims the start and end of your rides to exclude your privacy zone. If you stop at your house mid-ride, that will show. If I ever need to stop home mid-ride, I pause the tracker in the street, and return to the street before resuming.
would you fancy riding the
would you fancy riding the streets of Middlesbrough ?
31.5km I reckon covers the
31.5km I reckon covers the whole of my council ward…
Here’s a suggestion for
Here’s a suggestion for anyone doing this – export a GPX file from Strava (or take straight from your GPS/phone logging app) and upload it to http://www.openstreetmap.org/
This helps make more accurate free maps that you can use on your Garmin free of charge, (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin) and is used by various free cycling related services including:
http://www.opencyclemap.org
http://www.strava.com
http://www.cyclestreets.net (used by many local authority cycle route planners)
A good way to give something back IMHO. When you upload a GPX file you can choose to keep it anonymous.
gonna do it today!
gonna do it today!
I’m in. Two streets in our
I’m in. Two streets in our Village, thats going to be a tough one…