Wade Wallace is at it again. The founder of Cycling Tips is drumming up support for the second annual Febfifteen Strava Challenge that pits “Australia vs The World” in a week-long riding contest from February 24 to March 2 that asks participants to ride 15 hours in just seven days.
Sound easy? Think again, as even Wallace struggled to record seven hours in 2013 as Australia was on the short end of a lopsided affair taking just 29.6 per cent of the total hours tallied globally.
Of the 6,131 cyclists that took up the challenge, only 1,035 successfully completed the 15-hour benchmark. In total, a staggering 54,229 hours were ridden, with Australia averaging four hours per entrant, while the world averaged five.
“It was a lot harder than I thought,” Wallace told BikeRadar. “It’s amazing how much personal life and career can get in the way of logging some serious saddle time, but I am very proud of this event and am looking forward to rallying cyclists around Australia to help us avenge last year’s defeat.”
Wallace, a Canadian native who moved to Australia in 2005, has fully embraced Australia as his home, and takes last year’s loss personally.
“Let’s be honest, we got creamed,” said Wallace of the contest that adopts his native North American model of measuring the amount of riding in terms of time rather than distance. “The world team consisted of more than 4,155 riders from the UK, USA, New Zealand and South Africa. We had 1,076 cyclists, but let’s be honest, a lot of the world’s participants are in the middle of winter and knee-deep in snow, so we have no excuses here in Australia not to get out and ride.”
And just what does the winning side receive? According to Wallace “eternal Strava bragging rights!”
What more could a die-hard cyclist want?
Wallace, a former engineer-turned-cycling authority, has spent the majority of the past six years building a cycling enthusiast’s hub with stunning photography, passionate insights, community engagement, and a breakout YouTube cycling show, for the most part all from the comfort of his very own Melbourne-based home. Seems that the passion hasn’t changed since we featured the site in 2011.
“Everything that has happened over the past few years has evolved organically,” said Wallace, who “went all in” in 2012 with the site after a three-year gig as Asia-Pacific general manager for industry lifestyle brand – Rapha.
“Few people realise that it all started with me working from the kitchen table in my underwear,” he said. “Very little has changed. I just want people to see the beauty in cycling and perhaps inspire them to ride their bikes. And it would be great if they sign up for the Febfifteen Strava Challenge and do just that.”
