For most of us, finishing up a long and arduous season might mean pizza, beer and a well-earned holiday in any order that they come.<\/p>\n
French climbing ace Paul Seixas on the other hand, had different ideas. Ideas such as a 320km (200 miles), 12-hour ride<\/a> in the mountains that saw him rack up more than 8,000 metres of ascent and very nearly an Everesting. He posted it on Strava<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The 19-year-old, who rides for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, called it, rather aptly, ‘Finishing the season well’. He’s not wrong.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Not that Seixas has anything to prove to anyone at this point. Having penned a three-year contract with the French WorldTour team, this season’s high point was undoubtedly winning the the Tour de l’Avenir<\/a>, bookending it with stage wins in uphill time trials.<\/p>\n He also took a bronze medal in the European Championships elite men’s road race and was seventh in Il Lombardia<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n His ride, which took place on Sunday, took him on a circuit of the Swiss Alps that included major mountain ascents including the Col de Saisies, the Cormet de Roselend<\/a>, the Petit and Grand St Bernard and the Col de Forclaz. No wonder his computer was broadcasting a figure of 8,186 metres climbed at the end of the outing.<\/p>\n He will be familiar with some of these climbs from the Tour de l’Avenir, with the Saisies and the Cormet de Roselend featuring in the same order on stage five, which saw Seixas finish second, five seconds behind winner Jarno Widar of Belgium.<\/p>\n None of that had robbed him of too much vim and vigour, it would appear, because he set a total of 30 PRs on his ride at the weekend, as well as a whole bunch of seconds and thirds.<\/p>\n One of the things we love about Strava is how it allows us a window on some of the craziest training rides undertaken by the pros \u2013 rides that would otherwise probably go entirely unreported.<\/p>\n Other momentous escapades we’ve enjoyed over the years include Chris Froome’s 237km<\/a> in the French alps back in 2021, Annemiek Van Vleuten’s eight-hour ‘Empty the tank’ epic<\/a> in 2020, and ultra-riding star Fiona Kohlbinger’s three-country, 430km, 14-hour epic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of us, finishing up a long and arduous season might mean pizza, beer and a well-earned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-213811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}