As every year at Devex the company takes a week long Summer break in August. August isn’t really the best month to take holiday in Spain, because on the one hand everybody does and on the other hand tends to be really hot. That’s why I tend to do a trip on my own, without my girlfriend. In the recent years this have been cycling holidays. ...
Amazingly this is the first multiple day cycling trip that I have done alone so far. I had the weekend for myself and decided to use it to explore some new roads in Catalonia. After asking my cycling friends for some tips I decided on using Ripoll as a base. It is a two hours and €8 train ride from Barcelona and surrounded by nature parks and nice mountains. ...
This year I took part in the second Gran Fondo Barcelona. A Gran Fondo or Sportive is basically a large group ride with a given route, which shouldn’t be competitive. The advantage is that you are often travelling on closed roads and there is some support in form of food stops and mechanical support. I already took part in the 2015 edition, so I knew a lot of the things that were expecting me. ...
For some reason this year turned out to be a year with a lot of time spend on bicycles. While I have been cycling more since I changed to a company which allowed me to park my bicycle in the office, this year I increased this even more. One part of this has definitely be Strava, which allows me to track my riding and improvements (or not) over time. Some numbers for 2014, 2013 in brackets: ...