Cycling uphill

Mytholm Steeps

September 14, 2017September 7, 2015 by tejvan

Last time I was up in Yorkshire, I found Trooper Lane and Shibden Wall. Glutton for punishment, I was keen to find more of the same. As it turns out, I found a hill in Hebden Bridge which had me reduced to getting off and walking very slowly. A hill that has truly defeated me, but more of that later.

First off, I headed over Bingley Moor and Oxenhope Moor to Hebden Bridge to have a go at Mytholm Steps, I have done it before, but I fancied another go.

BTW: If you want to do some real hill climb training, rent an apartment in Hebden Bridge. I think it’s fair to say Hebden Bridge has the highest density of really hard hill climbs in the whole of Great Britain. I can’t think of any other town, which is surrounded by such a feast of anti-gravity challenges.

Mytholm Steeps / Rawtonstall lane

It’s a real killer mile. average gradient of 12%. But the middle half a mile averages 17%, with some brutal 25% hairpins. It climbs 200m in a really short space of time. Quite often you think you’ve done enough to get to the top of any hill, and then another section of 20% looms in front of you. It’s a really tough. It will have you out of the saddle all the way up until you escape the trees and the final (relatively more) gradual finish.

Buxton CC hill climb 2015

November 2, 2016September 6, 2015 by tejvan

Today was first hill climb of the year – Buxton CC hill climb on Long Hill. Actually it was the second hill climb of the year. I’ve already done one in May on truncated version of Shap Fell, where I averaged a rather incredulous 25mph for a hill climb.

Long Hill is another of these long and gradual ascents. Get a tailwind and it makes it relatively fast. It makes something of a gentle transition from the time trial season to the more brutal 11% 4 minute climbs which will soon be coming thick and fast.

After weeks of patchy rain, conditions were relatively benign. Mild, dry and a gentle tailwind – as good as you can get for hill climb season. There was a good turnout with 67 riders on the start sheet.

I was able to warm-up on Long Hill before the race started, but then at top my garmin mount broke so I stuffed it down jersey for the rest of the day.

Video and interesting stat

September 5, 2015September 5, 2015 by tejvan

A friend, Adam, made this video a while back. It features me eating a muesli bar which is a bit scary, but apart from that it’s pretty standard fare.

Two stats show 2015 has been a good year for cycling uphill.

2015 Sept 5 – 138,000m of vertical ascent.
2014 – Sept 5 – 108,000m
2013 – Sep 5 – 82,000m
2012 – Sep 5 – 58,000m

So I’ve cycled uphill nearly twice as much as in 2012.

Graphs courtesy veloviewer.com

Distance

2015 has been a good year for distance

Interval training tips

September 3, 2015 by tejvan

At this time of the year, quite a few people email me for tips for hill climb training / intervals. It is hard to reply:

Hill climb training is quite individual depending on general fitness / condition. For example, the training I do know is different to when I first started cycling. Years of training have enabled me to cope with a greater volume of training than in the early days.
It is not false modesty to say I have no particular qualifications or knowledge of training. I have accumulated bits of knowledge and tried to use what works for me, but it is somewhat ad-hoc and individual.
Occasionally, people ask if I would consider becoming a cycle coach. The honest answer is that the idea of becoming a cycle coach doesn’t appeal to me at all. There are certainly plenty of coaches to choose from though!

I found an article I published on an old cycling blog in 2010 – Called ‘interval training tips. The funny thing is that I ended up revising almost everything in the article! It would have been easier to write new article. It shows I’m always changing my mind about what is a good way to train. I suppose in the past few years I’ve gained more experience, (e.g. using power meter and having coach in 2014)

It is hopefully a start for some interval training tips, though there is always more to add. See also similar article – Hill climb intervals.

2 minute intervals

August 31, 2015August 30, 2015 by tejvan

I’ve spent two weeks in NY. I did a little training on Dougleston Parkway – a short hill, which takes 1.30 if you really go for it. It’s a bit like Monsal Head, except instead of the beautiful Peak District, you have as a backdrop – innumerable concrete flyovers, a smelly sanitation dump and cars driving like only crazy New Yorkers like to.

Quite often you get the passing draft of a big smelly dumpster truck, though the benefit of the passing draft is negated by the nervousness about breathing in within a 20 foot radious. Refuse collection is essential for any city – it’s just that we don’t tend to do high intensity intervals next to it. Still, I got four good training sessions in during the 12 days. Just about enough to feel I didn’t fall behind in the general scheme of things.

Cycling in Surrey Hills

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by tejvan

I last rode Box Hill in 2012, a few days before the London Olympics. It was a memorable time for British sport and cycling in particular. I’d been looking for an excuse to go back. Simon Warren’s guide of S.E. England climbs showed quite a lot of climbs around Dorking I haven’t done before. After Yorkshire hills last week I was on a roll for finding new climbs so good weather encouraged me to drive an hour from Oxford to Mickleham to try and range of different climbs on the Surrey downs.

First climb of the day was Box Hill. Everyone knows Box Hill now. 2 miles @ 5% It’s a beautiful climb, it’s iconic, it’s wonderfully engineered and a delight to ride. Yet, there’s the Yorkshire Hill climber in me who sees this wonderful natural hill and thinks – wouldn’t it be better just to throw a few cobbles up this surface and make a hill that goes straight from bottom to top?

box-hill-steep — If this was West Yorkshire, they wouldn’t have bothered with these ‘European hairpins. But, made a proper hill climb.

Having said all that, I was worried by a sign at the bottom of Box Hill – warning of loose chipping – max 20mph, but fortunately, they haven’t chucked a load of gravel on the smooth surface of Box Hill yet!

After Box Hill, it was over Ranmore Common and up the long climb of Coldharbour Lane from Dorking. It took quite a while to find the start of the climb because of Dorking’s one way system. But, it is a good climb, with varying degrees of steepness. It’s a long old drag to the top of Leith Hill

Coldharbour Lane

Distance: 2 miles
Average gradient: 4%
Height gain: 125m (132m total climbing because there is some descent near top)

From Leith Hill I made my way to Cranleigh and Barhatch Lane, which is said to be the toughest climb in Surrey. A long drag then a real sting in the tail with a 21% gradient to finish.

Hour record cycling uphill

August 14, 2015 by tejvan

This is a training session, which is a bit different – A bit of fun or a bit of torture, depending on your point of view.

Pick a hill (less than 5km) and see how many vertical metres you can climb in an hour. It is like a mini Everesting attempt all condensed into one hour. It will make excellent hill climb training, good training for a 25 mile TT and also good training for long Alpine climbs.

The 5km limit is purely arbitrary and based on the fact most accessible climbs in the UK are around 1-2km. Short hills make it harder because you have to do more u-turns and more descending. If you wanted to maximise vertical ascent in an hour, you would start at the foot of the Col du Tourmalet and see how far you can get up in an hour. A really top pro, may be able to manage close to 1,500m – 1,600m in an hour. Which is equal to VAM (velocità ascensionale media) – basically vertical meters climbed per hour. But, in the UK, there are no such climbs.

The optimum hill

The optimum hill would probably have a constant gradient of around 12-13% All your time is climbing, you don’t have to pedal on descent and you can probably do all the climbing in the saddle.

The important thing is to be safe when doing u-turns at the top and bottom of hill. The road needs to be quiet and good views of traffic. It’s only a training session.

Chinnor Hill reps

chinnor-corner-2 — Chinnor Hill during 2014 Tour of Britain

I chose Chinnor Hill because it is near enough to Oxford to cycle out and gives a reasonable height gain of 119m / 9% average per lap.

Distance: 0.8 miles / 1.3km
Height gain: 393ft/ 118m
Average gradient: 9%
Max 16%

It also has a convenient roundabout at the bottom of the hill, to make safer u-turns at bottom of hill.

The happy motorist

August 12, 2015 by tejvan

Yesterday, I was riding on a small lane from Bolton Abbey to Burnsall. It’s a fairly idyllic location and, as it was a recovery ride, I was taking it fairly steady. At one point a car came towards me on this narrow stretch and didn’t slow down even a fraction.

On the positive side he didn’t knock me over into the ditch. But, it was passing at speed far too close for comfort or safety. At this point it is all a familiar tail of woe – something most cyclists can relate to. But, a minute later I saw another car in the distance. Firstly, you start to fear a repeat performance, but this car came to a stop. It was quite a generous wait – because I still had a considerable distance to where he was kindly waiting.

In a spirit of mutual good deeds. I got out of the saddle, rocked from side to side and pretended to sprint to where the car was waiting. I may have been pulling a few Tommy Voeckler style gurnings into the bargain. When I got to the car, the driver was literally rolling around with laughter. He was mimicking my shoulder rolling and giving me a big thumbs up. I wish I could have taken a picture of his face, I’ve never seen such a happy motorist. He really thought it was funny that this cyclist was sprinting along to speed up his wait. (I wasn’t going fast at all.)

It just struck me the different attitudes you can meet on the road. For the sake of 3 seconds, the first car refuses to slow down and just ploughs through as if I was an invisible cyclist. The second driver was happy to wait an extra 15 seconds for me to arrive. But, it was the second driver who got so much joy from the whole experience.

***

Alas I’m back in Oxfordshire. Just as Yorkshire / Calderdale was getting very interesting.

It seems there are no shortage of really hard climbs around West Yorkshire / Calderdale area. I wish I had stayed in Yorkshire for a few more days. Since posting about Trooper Lane – readers have advised of more tempting climbs and routes.

For example:

The Buttress – One of the Calderdale 50
The Hell of the Worth – 50 miles, 2,700m of climbing

Trooper Lane

July 13, 2016August 10, 2015 by tejvan

Trooper Lane is a short, steep cobbled climb in Halifax. It makes a good claim to be the toughest cobbled climb in the Yorkshire area – possibly the whole of England. With contenders like Thwaites Brow, this is tough competition.

I saw Trooper Lane on the Cycle Show a few weeks ago, with Simon Warren going up and describing the climb.

I have also been reading James Allen’s 50 Classic Cycle Climbs in Yorkshire / Peak District, which includes Trooper Lane.

So it was definitely on my bucket list of stupidly hard climbs, that for some reason I feel a compulsion to seek out and ride up as fast as possible.

Trooper Lane

Distance: 0.4 miles
Average gradient: 18%
Height gain: 125 metres
My time: 4.09
Average speed: 6.5 mph
Gear used: 39*28.
Cadence 58 rpm
Location: Halifax

Yellow Jersey Club – Edward Pickering

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015 by tejvan

I was reading ‘The Yellow Jersey Club‘ during the Tour de France. Short biographies of those who have won the Tour de France in the past couple of decades. It started off in the post-Merckx era with Bernard Thevenet (1975 – 77).

I don’t think I even knew Bernard Thevenet had won the Tour de France. So I learnt something new for a start. The man who dethroned Merckx was not exactly another Merckx. He had his own idiosyncrasies and perhaps lacked the steely determination and need to win that a Merckx or Hinault had. During his career as a rider he was very popular with the French public, which is surprising given his current relative anonymity. Interesting to compare to say Bernard Hinault who only really won the hearts of the French when he started to be less than invincible, towards the end of his career.