Cyprus | Strava Bomb

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I had no idea that Cyprus was going to be so good for cycling. Some of the roads out here are amazing. Ive just spent two weeks riding around and exploring the island. Theres loads to see on the island and in general the roads arent very busy. The only problem is that its not really set up for cycle culture. Not many cafes and not many cycle shops. If youre with a good group of mates who can all ride 100+ km a day and want 28 degrees in Nov them its worth considering.

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I have a twoe work trip out in Cyprus. And one thing I didn’t expect was for the cycling to be so damn good out here. I’ve never been here before and I’ve got no idea what to expect. I also have no clue how to sort out a route. Seemed like the easiest thing to do was to let Straa do the heavy lifting. So, I let it choose me 100k loop. And today, we’re going to give it a ride and see exactly how good Strava is at creating roots. Somehow we’ve ended up in Cyprus to close out the year. Joined by Jenny Fletcher who is an IFIT trainer. We’re out here with IIT. I’ve got two weeks of cycling out in Cyprus. Got a day off today. I’m going to go explore. Guys, welcome back to the what life. Let’s roll. So, we’re going to have a quick chat. Well, we’re going to bowl around the We’re going to bowl around the island. We got 55 miles to do today. We don’t really know where we’re going. We’ve already hit some gravel. So, if you want to know what Cypress is like for cycling, well, Jenny’s written all over it now. But it’s it’s amazing. It’s November. It’s 28°. It’s 9:30 in the morning, so it’s going to be hot today. And most of the roads are really quiet is the one thing we’ve noticed. And good quality. Not typically known as a cycling destination. Probably because it’s not like there’s no lo, you know, not loads of cyclists. There’s no not loads of like cafes and restaurants. Because in case you didn’t realize, cycle culture is more important than cycle performance. Right. Am I doing all the nap today, Jenny? Oh, I thought this was your podcast. Oh, we’re on a hill. Well, having said that, the climbs here are incredible. We think this is going to be the next bike destination. We’re creating it. We’re going to pop up some coffee shops here and there. Few little small independent coffee shops. This place would be absolutely marvelous. Oh, there’s a lot of climbing. Half the island is a mountain, like a mountain range, but it’s really nice. Quiet roads, too. Super quiet. So, this is rush hour. We’ve had four vehicles going. I’m also going to give away a few Straa secrets today. Um because I we found this route through Strava. You know, a lot of people always wonder how you find roots in new places. They have an AI system. You can go on the app. I’ll show you how to do it. Set your distance, find your start location. And basically it uses like the most trodden trails, the popular parts and it and it makes you a route. So we are going to rate Straa’s AI route making today. So we are southwest of the island. I think like that’s where we are. um down towards Papos. I don’t know too much about the history of Cyprus or what’s going on. Um just we’re basically heading north up into the uh up into the hills. I think they’re called like the Trudeau Hills. I’ve heard really good things about them. We shot a I fit series video in them like two days ago. Gorgeous. But when we shoot, we drive around the island, jump out, shoot for 40 minutes or shoot a 40-minute ride, jump back in the car. Today, we’re all on the bike. And look at Jenny’s bike. She’s got a lovely bike. Chapter two. Chapter two. The name of it, Coco, which means to soar and fly. So, yeah, here we are. Is it a US brand? No, it’s from New Zealand. chapter 2 and I’m the lucky one getting to ride it. And if you are a YouTube afficionado, you might know that Jeff from NorCal has a chapter 2 as well. He’s also just been given a fact to Monzo. So Jeff, mate, got to you got to got to stop with getting given bikes. And Jenny is a Canadian that lives in Arizona, Texas. in Texas. Sorry. Yeah. And a triathlete. But we won’t hold that against her. Yeah. I’m trying. I’m trying. Little side note for you. In general, the road quality in Cyprus really good. and share a few straa facts with you. Who knows about the kudos bomb? So, if you do a group ride and you upload it, let’s say you do a Grand Fondo, go into your ride once you’ve uploaded it and it will say view everyone else you rode with. Click on that like manage group I think it says. Shake your phone and then it’ll say do you want to kudos to everyone and you say yeah baby and that’s called a kudos bomb. Not everyone knows about that. Did you know about that, Jenny? I did not. I cannot wait to go home and shake this. There you go. Little inside kudos tip for you. The kudos bomb. Shout. Or as I would say in Canada, kudos. Kudos. Kudos. A boot. And a big shout out to Chris Miller for getting verified on Straa. Jesse Cole. I’m sure it’ll happen soon. Look at the quality of these roads. It’s mindblowing. Best roads I’ve ridden on. It’s a very quiet place. Cyprus, if you don’t like people, you’ll be Yeah, you’ll like it. You’ll be very happy here. I’m very happy here. So today, 55 miles, just under 100k. It’s basically, it’s a loop, but it’s uphill on the way out. Little plateau, then rolling downhill for the way back. But we are desperate for some orange juice. We need orange juice. Keep seeing signs for orange juice, but everyone’s closed. It’s Saturday, 11:00 a.m. Out of season. Can’t complain that we’ve got the roads to ourselves and then complain that everything’s not open. No. And Max’s uh hours died, so he’s going by RP, which is supposed to be two. I feel like maybe I’m in three or four trying to stay with them. We’ve just done the hardest part of the climb for the day. Just going to emphasize, we do not know what we’re doing, but we’re doing it. So, there’s a lot of chalk roads on the island as you can kind of see from the um pavement. There’s like loads of chalk marks. Quite possibly Straa could try and loop us onto one of those. It tried to do it early. We had to reroute. We’re going to stop, have a cold drink. It’s 11:00 a.m. Hardly seen anyone. Out of season. Pretty happy we found a cafe that’s open. This is the best thing about having a day off. You can work harder than when you’re doing your days on. So, we just we just basically almost got to the top and it flattens out on the top. Then we head down. We just um figured it was more fun to walk a bike. So, we’re just hike a bike. Hike a bike. Don’t know whether you can see that. I don’t know how to say this with more affirmation. The roads out here are the best roads I’ve ever ridden on. They’re flawless. So, we got to the edge of the Trudeau mountains or hills, which is where all the forests are, which are gorgeous. Just don’t have time to do that today. Um, here’s the thing. We’re doing 55 miles. I haven’t had to stop once. Like traffic lights, junctions, non-stop, rolling roads for 100k without stopping on perfect conditions. They also had some quite bad fires here last year, which must have been massive cuz it has burnt up large parts of this part of the island. Anyway, also side note, SLC 5. Absolutely in love with it. Absolutely in love with it. We’re going to book it home now. We’ll be home in no time. 23 miles to go. 36 38k. Yeah, we’ll be home soon. We are totally at the mercy of Straa’s algorithm, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. The back rows out here are just so super quiet. 21 miles to go. 33k. Locked in. It’s good. But ambitions they see light by those who do. All these little villages are just amazing. Empty but amazing. There’s no one here. When the she is by those who Such a good route. I think Straa’s done us an absolute solid here. Absolutely no idea where we are, but we’re having a good time. I got Max coaching me to the finish cuz I’m a little tired. You got this, right? You got this, Jenny. Stick with me. Your I fit trainer. So, Jenny’s been having to ride all the workouts. We’ve done two workouts a day for 5 days, maybe 6 days. I’m on an ebike when we’re shooting. So, my Straa, I have to change it all over to ebike. Jenny’s just on her bike knocking out the K’s each day. I have no idea how I got so lucky to be able to do this. This is about 8k of descending. Not steep descending, just really nice four or 5% decline. I haven’t done this in a while and it is I mean it’s really nice. This has just been such a great ride. Kudos to Strava. Straa AI finding the route. I love this bike. I love the SLC3. Feels very different. I rode the SLC3 in my relative terms. So hard. Loved it. This a little bit firmer. Way more responsive on the cornering. It’s nice. But really, this one’s better. Chapter 3, New Zealand brand. Uh, Chapter 2, sorry. New Zealand brand. Yeah, it looks nice. Thank you so much. So, we have like 5K left. Jenny had to stop. Also, we need more water. We had an emergency stop. No, we didn’t. We’re having a nice having a really nice ride. We’re basically back. We got all This is our day off. Um it’s 1:15 now. We’ll be back at4 to 2, then go and hit the pool. So, this is the thing. Okay, this is my this is my thoughts on Cypress, having driven and ridden around it for a week. If you want to come ride a bike here, you have to be quite a serious cyclist because once we got out into the foothills, there’s not much. It’s a little bit like Jirona when you get out when you’re in Jirona and you and um not Jirona, sorry. It’s um it’s a little bit like Calpe because once you get out of off the coast and go into the hills, there’s not a huge amount there. like you can go to town from town to town. Out here there’s even less. Um we’re obviously out of season, but I guess that’s why you’d come here is cuz it’s 29° in November. The ride has been really good. So if you are self-sufficient, just like in my head, what I’m thinking is when I’m out in the hills is like if something happened here, there’s what can we do to like get help? Luckily, we’re with Jenny and we could phone up one of the crew and be like, “Can you come pick us up?” But that’s not what everyone’s going to be able to do. So, it’s it feels like, you know, it’s not like Morca. You can go out there, do a little 30k, 50k ride, and and it’s there’s cafes and things to stop at. Out here, we’ve done 100k. We haven’t seen a huge amount of places to stop. It feels like it’s for proper cyclists. It’s I have no words again. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. And we’re getting smoothies now. So, best Saturday ever. Your month was seven. Right, let’s get this ride done and then spend the rest of the day in a swimming pool. You can’t say that too often in November as an Englishman. The worst thing is is that the last hill for the day is back up to the apartments. Oh god. We’re going to use all the gears. made it home. Apollo Heights Residency. Um 4 and a half hours, 100k, perfect roads. Didn’t have to stop once, but we did stop twice. Once for a water drink and then the second time for a smoothie. Great day. Fabulous. That was fun. That’s it. Cyprus 100k. Great route, great company, great day out, really great roads. I have noticed that. Like I said, you got to be a strongish cyclist to if you want to kind of come out here and do it properly because that was 100k. We got to a point where we just weren’t really seeing. It was nice cuz you’re like you’re out there, you’re having a really good time, but you’re in the middle of not the middle of nowhere. Like you’re still on an island in the Mediterranean, but you’re kind of not like it’s not like there’s tons of towns and places and there’s like the reason it’s not a cycling mecca is there’s not tons of bike shops and cafes and things like that. It’s the culture that it’s missing, but the riding super high as in it’s really great. We’ve done five days, six days of driving around finding some of the best spots. Um, so I kind of recommend it. It’s 29° today or 30°. Lovely. Guys, thanks for joining. Please do like and subscribe. Oh, if you want to be a STR, if you want to get verified on Strava, my last thing I’m going to say, if you want to get verified on Straa, and the only reason you kind of want to get verified on Straa is you then you basically get Straa premium for free. You don’t pay, which is obviously a good thing. If you’re an athlete and you race for like a team, like a high level team, you can become verified as an athlete. Always worth chancing your hand trying to do that. You um can apply to be Straa verified. It’s an application process. They’ll ask for your social media. What you This is what you need. You can’t have a private account. You need an open account. You’ve got to be quite good like um you know, if you got social media accounts, they they will ask for those because the whole idea is is that people get to follow the training of someone that has a like a social presence in some some way, shape, or form. We want to get Jesse Coyle verified as well. So, I’m going to drop an email over to one of the people I know in Shamley. Anyway, um they’ll ask for your social media channels. Can’t have a private account. And importantly, you have to update like your rides. It can’t just say morning ride, lunch ride, afternoon ride. It h, you know, you got to change it. Change it. Add a couple of photos, you know, keep the conversations going. That that is what they value. And some of the other perks is they send you stash. Like I’ve got Strava caps, I’ve got Strava socks, I’ve got Strava all sorts, which is quite cool. and events. They, you know, I think they want to do more events. That’s what I’ve been told. Anyway, guys, thanks for joining. Please do like, subscribe, follow me on Straa if you want. Um, link all down below. See you on another one soon. And I like to feel the shame of it.