My name is Professor Badass, and I’m a Stravaholic…….

It was merely a matter of time before even a lumbering, ancient cylcosaurus like the Prof succumbed to that heinously deadly disease combo of Garminitis and Stravaholism. One minute he was gunning along some obscure back road in the Bowland Badlands with only the accompaniment of his creaking knees and the echoing swirl of the breeze filtered through the empty space between his ears with a simple bike computer affixed to his bars. The next minute he’d caught Garminitis from TechnicalExpert, and done a crash course in turning it on and off. What seemed like only 13 nanoseconds later he’d heard the dreaded S-word from some poor sod already hopelessly cast adrift in the purgatorial river of lost souls.

We remember well that innocently-uttered question that presaged his fateful fall into the horrific degradation of compulsive segmentation:

“Strava? What’s Strava?”

It was written in the stars that the Prof would become a Segmenteer. Now he can be seen most mornings gunning it up (or down) some local hill in the magical kingdom of Garstang hoping for a PR or a 10^th place behind a bunch of properly fast boys so that he can boast about it to his long suffering tortoise (not on Strava by the way). You might even spot him in the dying light of evening elbowing aside a young girl on a tricycle as he tries to plunder some segment entitled “3^rd to 4^th lamppost on Croston Road Sprint” on his way to the chippy. What a sad, sad, sad bugger eh?

“What’s this got to do with the Badass?” we hear you ask.

Well, did you know that the Badass course is absolutely littered with segments, quite a few of them made by the Prof himself? In fact he has vowed that if there isn’t a segment on any particular Badass climb he’ll go out and make one. Now it would take a peculiarly twisted mind to suggest that we combine the times of all our Badass entrants on all our named climbs and come up with a Badass King of the Mountains prize on 6 July for the entrant with the lowest combined time. There is no chance we would do such a thing…oh no! That would be the way of madness and is totally against our ethos. The Badass is a family-oriented, non-competitive event as we keep reminding you. No trophies are, have been, or ever will be, awarded to competitive nutters who should know better. Nor would we ever contemplate giving out a Slow Lad of the Mountains prize to the unfortunate entrant with the highest combined time either. That would just be horribly cruel and mean, wouldn’t it?

Of course if anyone were to go for the BKoM as opposed to the GC, then they’d have to have a Garmin so they could post it on Strava. Did we ever tell you how useful it is to have a Garmin when riding round the Badass course? Loaded with its little GPX file this bleeping little wonder will keep you on track from start to finish. No sign anxiety, no “shit it was right at the top of that hill I’ve just bombed down” moments……….It’s Christmas soon, isn’t it? Go on, treat yourself. Just don’t type the S-word into your internet browser when you’ve got one……

The Prof “borrows” the next door neighbour’s son’s lightweight steed…..

…..and attempts to “king” on the Tithe Barn Lane Dropsy segment near Scorton

How will it end?

In disaster!!!!