Farley Church sign

This is a fairly long run with 3 steep climbs, a lovely 1 mile descent, and a 1.5 mile downhill finish.

Head off site towards Winchester, take the first left and go up, along and down again. Turn right and do a left-hand block then return the way you came.

The eponymous Sign is after 3.7 miles as you turn left to start the long descent.

What's this Strava thing then?

You may have overhead people talking about Strava at work. So what is it?

From the about page at Strava:

Strava grew out of our own needs as athletes. With busy lives requiring much solo training, we missed the sense of camaraderie and friendly competition that drove us to achieve our best through training with others. We envisioned Strava as the means to put our workouts and races into context. We call that social fitness.

Today, Strava lets athletes all over the world experience social fitness—sharing, comparing and competing with each other's personal fitness data via mobile and online apps. Currently focused on the needs of avid cyclists and runners, Strava lets you track your rides and runs via your iPhone, Android or dedicated GPS device to analyze and quantify your performance.

The best thing about Strava is Segments.  Segments are user-created, user-edited, and designate a portion of route where users can compete for time.  When you upload a run Strava automatically searches it to see which segments you ran. You get added to the leaderboard for the segment and if you are in the top 10 then you get a trophy. The fastest gets a special Course Record prize.  For cycling the prize is instead called "King of the Mountain".

Strava also keeps a record of your best 3 performances on net flat routes for a range of distances, from 400m through 800m, 1k, 1 mile, 2miles, 5k ... 1/2 marathon, 30k, ... marathon and who knows how high it goes?

They also have Challenges. I've done 3 running challenges so far:

1) Run 100, 150 or 200 miles in a month, with gels as prizes 
2) Climb 10,000 feet within the month of May. Strava generally under-credited my runs by 20% or so compared to my Garmin GPS watch. Prizes for the highest climbers but not for the unwashed masses.
3) Run 100 miles between 1st Sept and 16th Sept. Finishers got a printed copy of Trail magazine, all entrants got a digital copy.

You can Explore to find segments anywhere in the world, but popular segments around Hursley include:

Last mile along Romsey Road to the Church
Sparsholt Road Climb
From Hursley to the Sign and back
One mile descent in to Hursley via Collins Lane
Old Kennels Lane climb
Merdon Castle Lane climb (Violet Hill)
Climb towards Farley Mount held by a non IBMer, shock!
Pig Farm to crest
St Catherines Hill steps also held by a non IBMer by Al S-M has designs on this

Feel free to create more as you see fit, or come and kick my ass on the segments for which I am currently King. I'll get an email to let me know I've been dethroned :-)

Where have we run Jan 1 to Oct 5 in 2012?

An update on http://runningfromhursley.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/where-did-we-run-in-first-half-of-2012.html

We have now run over the fields from Sarum Road to Pitt, and I've created a Strava segment for it too.
We've also run the yellow dotted line between Farley Mount and Violet Hill (only once for me though)

Where else could we go? Maybe South in to Hiltingbury where there's some nice wooded offroad stuff. Up and over Hursley Road isn't a nice way to get there but I guess it wouldn't kill us, probably.

Where did we run in the first half of 2012?

Nearly everywhere, but I now want to re-run:

• the yellow dotted line between Farley Mount and Violet Hill
• over the fields from Sarum Road to Pitt
• some of the other paths in Otterbourne Woods

Click to enlarge:

St Catherine's Hill loop including the Steps

This run is about 70% offroad and offers some fabulous views.  Oh, and some fearsome steps:

From Hursley you head out over the fields parallel to Poles Lane.  Follow the footpath signs to Compton.  Take the underpass to get to the other side of the M3 and turn left on the main road.

Turn right before and in to the car park and enter Shawford Down, admire the view over Twyford and head down the steep hill and under the railway bridge.  Turn left after The Bridge pub and head along the path next to the Itchen Navigation until you go under the M3. Cross the road and keep on the footpath until you see the Steps.  Can you manage them without stopping?  How long does it take? (Bonus points if you can count the number of steps). There's a Strava segment for them too

After you step off the last step, turn left around the perimeter track.  You can go straight at the top of the steps but that way immediately carries on uphill and you probably fancy a break.  The left route also gives the best views over Winchester.  The route shown skirts round the hill and takes the short way back to the Itchen.

Cross the river on Garnier Rd and after 0.3 miles take the Clarendon Way footpath on the left.  Don't take the first mini-bridge on the right but head right at the next opportunity.  Cross over St Cross Rd on to Mead Road.  Cross the footbridge over the railway line and take the track between the trees.

This begins a 0.7 mile long stretch that ascends 52 metres.  There is a Strava segment for this bit so feel free to race.  After 0.25 miles take the gentle right path that leads out of the trees on to Whiteshute Ridge and keep on climbing.  The Strava segment ends at the bridge over Badger Farm Road.

Cross the bridge and carry straight on, all the way to Port Lane, where you can finish off with a speedy return from the sign.

Here's a link to the route on Bike Route Toaster if you want to explore variations.

See also http://www.dailymile.com/people/finnr/entries/13994431