In honour of the British Hill Climb Season, I cycled up a moderately steep hill near where I live. It was an all-out, lung-busting effort to get to the top of Rose Hill, I even overtook a young teenager on a mountain bike and said to him ‘Ey up!’
But I don’t think he spoke Yorkshire, and he replied with some modern lingo I didn’t quite understand either. The main thing is that I had left him in the dust and shown quite a nice turn of speed for a balding, middle-aged man with a few bags of shopping from Sainsburys.
The one great consolation of middle age, is that I have avoided the dreaded middle-aged spread. Unlike my father and my father’s father, I’m still as stick thin as a young whippet hill climber ought to be. If only it was a contest of height to weight ratios and not power to weight, I might still be in contention for the top 3 places. Fortunately it is not – instead the hill climb is an honest test of power, speed, determination and maybe just a dash of insanity thrown in for good measure.
I kind of miss many things about the hill climb season, but all the training has lost something of its allure. I sometimes don’t recognise my former self who would seek out the steepest and longest hills with a relish and enthusiasm that becomes harder to comprehend as time passes.
Even though I don’t follow the results or what is happening, I still find myself thinking about the hill climb season around this time. It is as if I have a biological clock that gets to mid autumn and thinks about hill climbs, even if I do more thinking than actual cycling.
Even many years after dropping out of serious racing, I keep thinking of different years and get thoughts like 1991 Park Rash, it would have been fun to enter National HC aged 15 and raced against Chris Boardman. 2004 Winter’s Gibbet, wish I entered. 2007 Cheddar Gorge, shame I was injured e.t.c. But, regrets are a futile business. So I wish bon chance to the entrants for Winnats Pass and I trust it will be a great Hill Climb Championship.
A wistful post, but your writing is just as entertaining as it ever was.