Completing all the Strava Challenges for August 2018

I always enter all the Strava Monthly Cycling challenges. Generally I complete the Grand Fondo Challenge (100km) and in the summer months the Climbing challenge but in all the years they have been running I have never achieved the Distance Challenge at 1250km

1250km is a huge distance and subsequently requires a huge time commitment as well. On a few occasions I have ticked just about 700 miles so just over 75% but never got anywhere close.

However August 2018 will go down in my personal history as the month that I completed all 3 challenges as I rode in total 830 miles. Here's the email from Strava confirming the completion of that elusive challenge:

And here (from Veloviewer) is the proof of all 3 being completed:

The sense of achievement was immense and I had a real sense of pride

I am not sure quite how I did it but an element was consistent cycling throughout the month and a lot of cycling to work. With the prolonged good weather in August and favourable work requirements I was able to ride commute 2-3 times each week - riding on 3 days to work and back gives me 110 miles in that week. Looking at my Veloviewer summary for August it shows that I only didn't ride for 9 of the 31 days in August:

I also managed to squeeze in a number of longer (60mile+ rides over the weekends and I took 2 additional Annual Leave days over the Bank Holiday weekend. All in all this provided the time to actually churn out those miles


However the down side is that I am absolutely knackered as a result and whilst I have ridden another 180 miles in the first week of September they have been really hard and tiring - I am going to need to slow down a little in preparation for the Velo South event (100 mile closed roads) that is just 2 weeks away

I am not sure I'll be able to do it again until I retire and have the time to do so!