Strava has seen some truly momentous rides logged on its social media platform since launching in 2009.
Over the last decade, the app has become an almost essential tools for countless amateur riders and even many pros.
The likes of Chris Froome, Egan Bernal and Annemiek van Vleuten use Strava to give fans a great insight into the training required to be the very best in cycling.
Recently Oliver Naesen posted an enormous 360km day in the saddle on Strava, which is a pretty memorable way to deal with the unexpected off-season.
Inspired by Naesen’s heroics, we decided to look back through the archive and dig up five of the biggest Strava rides we’ve seen:
Chris Froome - Empty the Tank
Team Ineos leader and four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome is famed for posting some monster rides on Strava.
Froome doesn’t post all his rides online, but when he does they’re guaranteed to impress.
In January 2018, Froome posted a 271km ‘Empty the Tank’ ride on Strava.
The six-hour training session took in 3,485m of climbing around his home in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the Brit holding a staggering 44km/h for the ride.
Annemiek van Vleuten – Empty the Tank
Froome appeared to start a trend, as Mitchelton-Scott’s Annemiek van Vleuten posted her own ‘Empty the Tank’ ride online
The Dutchwoman posted her own 234km, eight-hour ride in southern Italy while ride with the men’s squad on a training camp in January this year.
World champion Van Vleuten climbed 4,572m and held an average speed of 28km/h.
Richie Porte – Everest challenge
After a slightly disappointing return to the Tour de France in 2019, Richie Porte wasn’t content with the 3,000km of racing in his legs and decided to take on a new challenge.
Just a few days after stage 21 in Paris, Porte (Trek-Segafredo) helped friend and professional triathlete Cameron Wurf celebrate his birthday as the pair completed the Everest challenge on the Col de la Madone.
Porte set off at 6.20am and rode for 16 hours to crest the 13.1km and 10 per cent climb a total of 11 times.
They racked up an enormous 9,012m of elevation gain, above the 8,847m needed to reach the summit of Everest.
Mathieu van der Poel – Amstel Gold Race 2019
Superstar Mathieu van der Poel can win in almost any discipline, but he has yet to take a victory as memorable as his phenomenal Amstel Gold Race win in 2019.
The Dutchman chased down a stacked breakaway down with the entire peloton on his wheel, rode past Julian Alaphilippe and Jakob Fuglsang, and still put out an enormous sprint to take the win.
Fortunately for us, Van der Poel shared his data from the ride on Strava.
Over the 260km race, he averaged 337w weighted for the day.
His 20-minute max was 378w (5.17w/kg) and he will put out a maximum of 1,400w during his final sprint.
James Hayden – Silk Road Mountain Race
James Hayden is one of the best ultra-distance riders racing today and he has done some truly remarkable rides.
Normally ultra-distant races are so far, competitors upload their rides day by day, but Hayden opted to posted his entire ride from the 2019 Silk Road Mountain Race in one activity.
During the 1,700km ride through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, Hayden spent 126 hours (or 5.25 days) in the saddle.
The ride took him to 30,495m of altitude gain and he burnt an insane 39,000 calories during the 14.1km/h average ride.
Alex is the digital news editor for CyclingWeekly.com. After gaining experience in local newsrooms, national newspapers and in digital journalism, Alex found his calling in cycling, first as a reporter and now as news editor responsible for Cycling Weekly's online news output.
Since pro cycling first captured his heart during the 2010 Tour de France (specifically the Contador-Schleck battle) and joining CW in 2018, Alex has covered three Tours de France, multiple editions of the Tour of Britain, and the World Championships, while both writing and video presenting for Cycling Weekly. He also specialises in fitness writing, often throwing himself into the deep end to help readers improve their own power numbers.
Away from journalism, Alex is a national level time triallist, avid gamer, and can usually be found buried in an eclectic selection of books.
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