Rapha Rising Day 1

Today the Rapha Festive 500 begun and to celebrate Dad and I rode a lovely 70.5km through the Melbourne’s East on route to the Dandenongs. Here we climbed the Devil’s Elbow before a lovely ride back down to Hawthorn after stopping in the Basin for coffee. All up we rode 70.5km which means that we still have 429.5km to ride before New Year’s day. This means that according to Strava I’m 14% through the 500km.

As anyone who was in Melbourne today will have noted the weather was fantastic making the riding a little bit more pleasant than it was for our European counterparts. I accidentaly forgot my SD card at home so I had to make do with the single inbuilt photos on my camera so not much evidence today but tomorrow there will be more, I promise. However if you are suspicious of my riding you can, or rather should follow me on Strava and Twitter to keep up to date with my rides. Todays File: http://app.strava.com/rides/2832445

Rider: Rik Van Looy

Trailing only one rider in the battle for most wins ever Rik Van Looy was the first rider to win all five monuments. He also won two world championships but like Rik 1, Rik 2′s influence in grand tours was pretty much non existence. His career truly bridged two generations when he started in 1953 Coppi had just peaked and when he retired in 1970 the Cannibal was already terrorizing rivals.