STORIES

The Band of Climbers Elevation Club. Join a global community of riders who love to climb, to push themselves to ride higher, steeper and further across all terrains. Earn reward points called metres, and the more metres you gain, the more the more the rewards you'll receive.

Friend of Band of Climbers and extreme product tester, @grimpeur (Dean Madden STRAVA) this weekend completed a two year goal, to ride 100 separate 100 mile rides in a calendar year. In fact, he achieved his goal inside 11 months, after narrowly missing out in 2019.

Europe's toughest sportive just got tougher. Switzerland's Tour des Stations is back for 2021, with an even tougher route for the Ultrafondo. So tough in fact, that it climbs the same elevation as Mount Everest, in a 242km course.

Have we discovered the world's toughest 100km cycling route? With 4480m of elevation, this could well be the toughest 100km ride anywhere in the world. 

 

One Man. One Climb. One Goal. The climb of Lysebotn in Norway is one of Europe's most beautiful, climbs, it's also one of Europe's best kept secrets. This is a story about one man's mission to take the Strava KOM

This September, complete the Band of Climbers September Summits Challenge, and unlock a £40* discount code to spend on Band of Climbers apparel or gifts. Complete any ride with over 2000m of climbing, and the code is yours.

How did Band of Climbers Amabssador, and UK National Hill Climb Champion Ed Laverack perform against the 240km - 8250m Tour des Stations - Ultra Fondo? Watch the video to find out.

Packing over 3000m (over 10,000ft) of elevation into just 100km of riding can be relatively common in the Alps or Dolomites. That can be achieved with 2 or 3 long climbs. But in the UK, it's almost unheard of. That is unless you live in Sheffield, and your name is Mark.

Back in May, during a dark and depressing Lockdown across most of the world, Band of Climbers launched our 100km challenge. A route planning/riding challenge that asked you to plot a route or ride with a maximum distance of 100km. The challenge was to pack in as much elevation into the route as you could, without the route overlapping itself, crossing over, repeating the same roads, or doubling back on itself.

If you're like us and have spent countless hours on Zoom over the past few weeks or months, we thought you might like some fresh backgrounds to raise your zoom game to new heights. We've made a series of our favourite images available to download for free as zoom backgrounds.

Whilst we've been sitting at home during lockdown, we got thinking, what is the most amount of elevation we can pack into a 100km ride, from our front door, without using the same road twice? We looked at our favourite routes on Strava and made a list of our favourite climbs, and got to work.

For many of us, indoor riding is our only option right now, however, that shouldn't stop us from training or improving our fitness and ability to get faster, and climb harder. So who better to help us than the UK National Hill Climb Champion and Band of Climbers Ambassador Ed Laverack. Here, Ed gives us his favourite 3 indoor riding sessions to climb faster.