Hank: Oh, my gosh, Manon, check this out. Look this is Ariel, the little mermaid that
has been drawn onto the streets of San Francisco. Manon: That is pretty cool.
Hank: Given it wasn't a cyclist, it was a jogger.
Manon: Check this out. Hank: What have we got there?
Manon: Brian Dave cycled 100 miles and climbed more than 5000 feet to trace Elvis into the
streets of Nashville. Hank: That's a good effort.
Manon: It took them seven hours. Hank: Really? Seven hours to create that?
Manon: Yes. Speaker 3: Guys, haven't you got anything
better to be doing than to be looking at those pictures? All day you've been looking at these,
come on now. Hank: He does not appreciate true art. Look
at this. Manon: Amazing.
Hank: It's awesome. [music]
Strava art has been around for a few years now, hasn't it?
Manon: It has. There are thousands of pieces, ranging from doodles to masterpieces.
Hank: Yes. Saying that there's Darth Vader, Santa Claus, T.rex, more T.rex's, and this
masterpiece. Manon: We thought we would give it a go ourselves.
Hank: Yes, set ourselves the challenge of tracing the GCN logo upon the streets of the
UK or somewhere in the UK. Manon: There are some ground rules though.
Hank: There are. We got to do a ride longer than 10 kilometers and less than 100 kilometers.
Manon: Yes, to give ourselves a chance of finishing it within the day.
Hank: Yes, that's definitely a bonus, isn't it? Other than that, anything goes. I'm going
to warn you though, Manon, before we start mine is going to be a lot better.
Manon: Yes, yes, whatever. Wait until you see mine.
Hank: Trust me. Manon: Just you wait.
[music] This is my finished product. I'm pretty happy
with that for my first attempt. Now I'm going to download it into my Wahoo and go out and
ride. [music]
Here goes nothing. [music]
Sorry. Excuse me. Coming through. On your left. Sorry.
[music] Not another one-way street.
[music] Hank: I need to get cracking. I'm no artist
so this could take me a while. Bear with me. Here goes.
[music] Yes, let's do it again. No. Cool.
Manon: I really should have spent more time planning this route. I'm not wearing the right
shoes for this. [music]
It's just so much harder than I thought, I keep going the wrong way and having to start
all over again. I think it's this way. Hank: Oh, no, I've been at this for two hours.
The issue I'm having is that I cant transfer the GCN logo onto the streets of Bath. How
do you do the straight lines, how do you do the corners, how do you make it look like
that? With that in mind, I need to call up some help. All right, who's going to help
me. I've been doing my research and I've found a chap called Gary Cordery who created a masterpiece
of the Berlin Wall. If he can do that, he can definitely help me with the GCN logo over
the streets of Bath. Manon's got no chance. Look at the detail
I'm going in, she's not going to be calling out professors of the world of Strava art.
On that note, I'm going to give him a call and hopefully, he'll be able to help me.
Right, Gary, I'm so glad you managed to get on this call with me. Can you tell us a little
bit about your story. Gary: I first noticed Strava art, couple of
years ago. I've always been interested. I'm a graphic designer, I make maps, I make websites
and I cycle. It you combine all those things, I would be the best person to do Strava art.
Hank: Your most famous piece is the Berlin Wall one you did.
Gary: It took about 10 days to plan using Illustrator, Photoshop. Overlaying Photoshop
map. I had to do a special technique where you start and stop your Garmin. You do a start/stop
technique to create straight lines. If you do enough straight lines, it creates a curve
following 250 individual little routes on my Garmin, as well. That was a big task. I
had to create 250 different routes on Strava, download them actually to my Wahoo because
I had a Wahoo going and a Garmin. A Wahoo to follow each of the 250 routes and
a Garmin just to record the ride, which obviously would be just squiggly. After the 250 routes
were done, I linked them all together using an online resource that links your fit files
or your GPX files to create one image. It was--
Hank: Oh, my Gosh. Wow. I had no idea that doing Strava Art to this level took that much
planning and preparation. To be honest, well it's way over my head. I asked Gary to help
me out. Walk me through the process and also do my routes. I then got an email with 73
routes. 73 routes that I have to ride. With the beauty of unpausing, pausing and saving
and unpausing again, I should have that. Now, I say should because well I'm doing it so
anything can happen. Without further ado, I better get all these routes onto my Wahoo
and get out on my bike. Time is ticking. I wonder what Manon's up to.
[music] Manon: 16k has taken me ages. Hank's going
to be here all night. I better get cracking on the rest of the route.
[music] That's my route done. Quite excited to see
what that comes out like. It's quite tough and it took me a lot longer than I thought
but, yes, we'll see. It will be interesting to see how Hank turns out. How long it takes
him compared to how long it took me on my 16k.
Hank: All right. My planning process is done. I've downloaded all the routes onto my Wahoo.
73 of them. I guess here's the start of it. Start, pause and off I go.
[music] Fastest route. All right coming up to the
checkpoint. Stop [unintelligible 00:08:41] start, pause, go.
[music] [unintelligible 00:08:52] yes, back, start,
pause. [music]
Beautiful [unintelligible 00:09:02]. Checkpoint number 58. Stop, back, start, pause.
[music] You're probably wondering how I feel about
this ride because it's quite unusual, isn't it? Normally, I would start my Wahoo and then
stop it at the end of my ride. At the moment I'm starting it, stopping it, pausing it,
saving it. It just doesn't really feel like a proper ride that I'm used to doing. I'm
enjoying it but if this is what it takes to create a bit of art then I'll do it. I wonder
how Manon's getting on. I bet she's not having a cake and a coffee. [music]
Another checkpoint, right, resume, stop N-ride. Yes. Back, start, pause and I'm headed back
that way. A bit of a strange ride. I got to see some nice sites.
[music] 73 routes done and that's the last one. I
guess I should get it uploaded and run and see Manon. Hopefully she hasn't been waiting
too long. Manon: I've had enough. I'm going home. Where
have you been? I've been waiting hours. Hank: I'm glad you're still here. Well, mine
did take a little longer than expected. Manon: How long have you been out?
Hank: Let's start off with yours, shall we? How long did it take? How long did you do
it in and let's see the-- Manon: It took me 20 minutes to plan it, to
plan the route, then took me about an hour and a half to ride it and it's 16K.
Hank: Oh, my gosh. Manon: I did get a little bit lost but it
was pretty easy. Hank: Let's see it then.
Manon: It's not bad. I'm pretty happy with that.
Hank: It's not bad, Manon. Mine's a lot better. Manon: What do you mean? No, it's not.
Hank: I mean check out this. Manon: No way did you do that.
Hank: Yes I did. Manon: No you didn't, don't believe you.
Hank: Yes, I did. I'm going to be honest. I did get a little bit of help.
Manon: Of course, from who? Hank: From Gary Cordery who's actually has
done at the Berlin Wall and other masterpieces on Strava. Mine took, well, I rode 73 kilometers.
I did 73 different routes and it took me a good, few hours to plan.
Manon: I've been waiting all day for you to get back.
Hank: I'm sorry about that but look at the masterpiece. It looks incredible.
Manon: It is good but it just took you so much time and effort compared to me. Mine
was-- Hank: Yes, and I did a lot of start-stopping
action, and well, you just did a continuous loop, didn't you?
Manon: Yes, one loop and you had 73 different laps.
Hank: Who do you think wins? Who do you think is the best and whose looks the best too?
Let us know in that comment section below. I reckon they should have a go. Why don't
you guys have a go. Get on Strava and do the best masterpiece that you can possibly do
and then drop it in the conversation below, because to be honest I think you guys could
do a better job than we did. Manon: Probably.
[00:12:42] [END OF AUDIO]