As it will mostly be mountain riding (flat itineraries are far more limited and may be less relevant too!), we have decided to use VAM as a way to group riders into categories (we have added the watt/kg as a rough guide). This is really a guide for now in order to make grouping suggestions for the rides leading to The Epic 21 challenge. We will then refine this depending on final numbers and levels. If you’re less familiar with VAM, we will be able to make suggestions based on other criteria - one way could be sharing a few Strava recorded rides with us where you feel you put in a good effort in terms of endurance, average speed and hill climbing for instance.

These grouping suggestions are purely for comfort as riders will be able to pick who they ride with and what itineraries they want to try. The idea is for everyone to enjoy themselves discovering the area rather than training for performance. There will of course be several groups of Group 1 level, several of Group 2 level etc.

Group 1. VAM <500            ( <1.6w/kg)

Group 2. VAM 500-700     (1.6-2.3w/kg)

Group 3. VAM 700-900    ( 2.3-3.2w/kg)

Group 4. VAM >900            (> 3.2w/kg)

Group 5. Pros training for the Tour de France mountain stages welcome!

Our Directors aim to ride in the 500-700 range even if they have managed to climb Alpe d’Huez at over 850 - this was still one hour and 10 minutes of climbing!  

To give a comparison, record holder (pre-Strava!) Marco Pantani went up Alpe d’Huez with a VAM of about 1,740 and 6.6 w/kg

When Tom Pidcock won his Tour de France stage up Alpe d’Huez back in 2022, he did the climb at 1,627 according to Strava, whilst Sepp Kuss who was one of the most recent KOM did it at 1,742.