Hill Climbs 2K12 Part 1

A major goal of mine this racing season was to do well in Hill Climbs. I fancy myself as a bit of a climber and seemed to do ok in them last year without much time/motivation/preparation so really spent the whole season waiting for them to come around again. In some ways that helped as it meant I had a large bottle of motivation stored up and hidden away, but perhaps also meant I didn't put as much effort in during the normal racing season as I perhaps could/should have. Oh well, you live and learn.

My 'second season' started way back in September with the Border City Wheelers open event up Hartside in Melmerby, Cumbria. I came away with a strong 3rd place behind Alistair Robinson and (as of last week newly crowned Junior National HC champ) James Knox. A pleasing result, a good 45s down on James over an 18min effort and god knows how many down on 1st. As you can see from the data: http://app.strava.com/rides/21384168#382511926 I wasn't holding anything back! There was then the small matter of starting my second year at University. Chaos, in a word; but in between moving into the new house and getting sorted etc I did the Welsh Championship event up Black Mountain, again placing 3rd. I was once again, some way off second place Jon Schubert and the rampant winning machine Dan Evans on another long climb, this time around 15min. Having been seeded relatively early I ended up catching (if I remember correctly) my 1 minute, 2minute, 3minute, 4minute, 5minute and nearly 6minute people; which is always nice. I took a few notable scalps in this event, which was also nice. I then tried and failed to peak for the Horseshoe Pass HC the Sunday after. I won't go into the details, but let's just say if you're going to try and peak make sure you plan how you're going to do it better than me!

I got 3rd on the Horseshoe last year in what I now realise was a pretty good time of 9:39 and spent the whole year thinking 'I can win on that hill'. Unfortunately that meant I ended up trying too hard to make sure everything was perfect this year; as I said I tried to peak but didn't quite get it right and then did far too hard a warm up on the day. I should have just treated it as just another event and taken it in that stride, but tried too hard to make it special and it backfired. Like I said earlier, you live and learn. I still placed 3rd again (in fact this year ahead of a bigger entry of over 100 riders) but was significantly down on last year's performance coming in at 10:12. Admittedly everyone was slower than normal due to it being REALLY COLD but I worked out the percentages that a few other people who did it last year as well were down by and mine was by far the biggest; which left me thinking that if I had just carried on training that week as normal and done a shorter more panicked warmup like normal, I probably would have gone significantly quicker. Hey ho, that's racing and it could have been much worse! I then had a week off (or should I say my poor Mum and Dad had a week off from running me up and down the country-they are the truly the real stars of this) which coincided with me having a Metric F*ck ton of Uni work to do. Which was nice.

I'd sort of planned the season to represent a isosceles triangle in that as the weeks progressed, so the length of events I did decreased. The idea being that with the National Championships being on the Infamous Rake in Ramsbottom (a 2:30 climb for the really fast guys) I would effectively taper my racing in the preceding weeks. I'm fairly certain there will be some science backing that up, but if I'm being completely honest the events just happened to be ones that fitted in. So as pre-Nationals prep I travelled back home to tackle a pair of climbs I did last year. 

The first was up L822. It's a relatively new event, so the hill doesn't really have a name yet other than 'Barley Lane', but at around 4mins it was a good one to do the week before the Big One. I improved on my time of last year by a modest margin but improved on my placing by coming...you guessed it, 3rd. Tejvan Pettinger was about 30s ahead of the second placed rider (who, interestingly, was not wearing a helmet despite it being flagged up as a Hard Shell Compulsory Event, not being a sore loser-just an observation, rules should be rules) who was 3.7s up on me. Sunday saw us return to the other side of Pendle Hill for the Nick O'Pendle event. The Nick is a famous climb and one of the Standards if you will, having hosted the Nationals in the past and had riders attempt to better Chris Boardman's record for a good few years! I knew it would be difficult to maintain my run of podiums in this one purely due to the class field. Mr Knox was riding again, as was Pettinger and Matt Pilkington. All had beaten me by significant margins in the past so even with a magic form day it would be tricky to beat any of them. As it happens, I didn't beat any of them and in fact ended up in 5th place, but in a faster time than last year-nothing to complain about! A solid weekend's racing and fooding complete (no matter how good I become at cooking nothing beat's Mothermade food) and I was ready to chill out ahead of the BUCS Uni champs and Nationals the next week.

More on that story another time...

Did You Miss Me?

October already?

Many, many things have happened since my last post. In no particular order: I've aged significantly, moved house, had a haircut, built a time trial bike, legally changed my Twittername, officially become a better racer, stopped eating cake (well, almost), perfected the art of cooking risotto, had a bizarre string of Open Hill Climb placings, nearly been murdered by a horse, cracked a bike frame, probed the scarily deep depths of discomfort a human can actually endure, learnt a completely useless French tense, made a pretty good byriani, discovered that by just eating less it is possible to lose weight, started wearing a tw*t hat, made many more additions to the GurnFolder, actually had veins appear visible on my legs, stumbled upon a far tastier and healthier ride snack, won a few trophies, started eating cake again in style, and most recently made myself feel a bit queasy eating a whole bag of cookies in about ten minutes. True story.

That's a pretty random collection of things that have happened, and I'm sure you would just love to hear about each and every one in detail (after all, what else is a blog for if not a medium through which to babble on about oneself?) but unfortunately I have neither time, patience nor desire to enthrall/bore/make you unfollow me on twitter with about 20,000 words on my life since my last post. I will however just pretend I didn't forget to blog at all over summer and pick up where I supposedly left off, which was about a month ago. 

Can you blame me for 'forgetting' to blog over summer? It's odd when I think about it, I have lots and lots of work to be doing now-I had nothing at all to do over summer-and yet I'm writing this...stay tuned for my next post where I actually talk about stuff! Honest.

The Hill Climb

Hill Climb's are a weird branch of the sport. I've just started planning for this year's events (even though they are a few months off) and have realised just how interesting they are. Take this year's National Championship hill for example, Ramsbottom Rake, 875m of lactic fun topping out at 25% and compare it to last year's course, Long Hill, at 4.44 miles at an average gradient of 3.2%.  Those are two extremes but hopefully give you some idea of the variety in this peculiarly British area of cycling. 


Hill Climbs are effectively time trials (fastest person from bottom to top wins) but with the exception of courses like Long Hill they hardly ever represent anything close to normal time trials. I suppose. It's tricky. Whenever I try and classify them as events I always get muddled up and confused. 


'Imagine a sprint right, except it's not a sprint 'cos you have to pace yourself. But you're effectively pacing yourself whilst flat out. Except you have to maintain that for anything between 2-10 mins. And you can't go too hard anywhere in case you pop. But you can't take it too easy anywhere 'cos otherwise your pain face won't look good enough in event photos. Imagine letting off a fire extinguisher-bear with me on this-you have to judge your effort correctly/depress the handle with enough force to cross the finish line completely 100% sans doute spent/run out of foam just as the fire goes out. Too much effort/handle depression too early and you'll blow/die and too little and you won't go as fast as you could have done/be left with a useless half full fire extinguisher.'


Not sure if that worked. But hopefully you get the idea. Both about HCs if you didn't already know, and how difficult they are to talk about eloquently. 


 One aspect that sets them apart is the fact that thankfully pointy helmets and funny socks tend to not make experiences in 'proper' HCs (ooooo) with the emphasis being more on 'If I remove this spoke, the wheel *may* collapse...but hopefully I'll have gone up the hill fast enough to be at the top when it does.' and 'you drilled holes in your frame? But why?!'. Followed by 'Is that carbon?' *CRACK* But seriously, the possibilities for gravity defiance are in my eyes sooooo much more interesting than wind-cheating. Plus you don't risk looking like this: 

Or this:

Although to be honest, digs at testers and Triantelopes aside, I imagine some people could ride for a Pro Team and still manage to look like they'd gone to a blind antelope for clothing advice.


I digress. Apologies to Testers/Triantelopes taking offence at the above.. I've got this whole inter-cycling 'hate' thing sorted: Mountain Bikers take the piss out of roadies in general, racers take the piss out of testers/Triantelopes and err...testers take the piss out of Triantelopes as well. I would imagine Triantelopes take the piss out of their non-tri running buds.  'Haha look at him, he hasn't discovered mechanical advantage yet...zoooom.' Or should that be 'zoooom....crash'? Sorry! 


Where was I? No seriously. I fear people reading this may be slightly disappointed as it seems to be turning into more of a 'let's take the piss out of <insert breed of cyclist here>'. 


So I suppose to sum not very much up, ride hill climbs. It's better than running and you won't end up looking silly.**








**Shifting Gear cannot take any responsibility for embarassment caused by actually looking silly as a direct or indirect result of reading this post. 

'Sagan: I am Robot'

It has emerged today that Liquigas-Cannondale wunderkind Peter Sagan is in fact a robot. Suspicions were aroused during the finale of yesterday's stage of the Amgen Tour of California where, despite puncturing with about 6km to go, he won the stage in thrilling style. 

Sagan was busted during dope control when the testers noticed he actually did have legs of steel. UCI Rule #029290832 Paragraph 756 Sub section FU says: "competitors shall not have actual legs of steel, only rumours of legs of steel will be allowed to circulate." UCI President P.McQuaid: "I'm glad we've finally uncovered one of these RobotRiders, we've been convinced for a few years now that approximately 68% of the Peloton is in fact metal. I would like to take this opportunity to send out a strong message : The UCI will not tolerate Cyborg-Doping. Or any form of doping. But especially Cyborg-Doping as that is one we can actually easily uncover with a hammer, no need for expensive lab tests." 

P.Sagan was not available for comment. Possibly as he has already been melted down and incorporated into Ivan Basso in a desperate attempt by Liquigas to get him to win something.

This raises other questions; for example maybe the UCI were looking in the wrong place when they scanned Fabian Cancellara's bike looking for motors-maybe they should have been scanning his legs. He said himself when questioned, 'Yeah I have two motors, one here and one here (gesturing to legs)'. And perhaps there should be mandatory searches of team cars now before stages, as one moto-photographer claims to have seen a comedy sized remote control in the hands of the Liquigas Directeur Sportif in the closing stages of the AToC stage with a big red button marked 'WIN'. These are, of course, just rumours. 

Shifting Gear would like to see the UCI encourage rehabilitation of Riderborgs post ban, and encourage their participation in much the same way that they encourage Women's Professional Cycling. With their current track record, that's probably the best way to get rid of it.






***N.B: Peter Sagan is not actually a robot, don't worry (although it made you think eh? ;D) And none of the above is true, factually correct, or even remotely serious. Well maybe the last bit.***

The Interval Game

This has probably already been done before, so I'm not claiming ownership or anything. I am however claiming all rights to resulting Fun . Preferred Royalties format is cake, but is negotiable.


So this is the Musical Intervals game. Essentially, you take two enjoyable past times (interval training and listening to music) and mash em together. Genius format or what. The basic concept is:

1. Get turbo trainer.
2. Set music playing device to shuffle.
3. 'Work' for one song, 'rest' for next song and repeat.

Simple enough? I have come up with some ways to spice it up a little....

1. Choose a Heavy Metal playlist and on the 'on' song try and match your cadence to the beat. Top gear maximum resistance mandatory.
2. Choose a 70's Prog Rock playlist...and, well, all I can say to that is good luck.
3. Choose a more modern Pop playlist and sprint for 30 seconds every time you hear the word 'baby'.
4. Choose a Death Metal playlist and sprint for 45 seconds every time you can't understand what they're saying. 
5. Choose an S Club 7 playlist and sprint for 1000000 seconds every time you feel the need to vomit.

See, it's like a drinking game for cyclists!

Couple of other points; 

• You start with 3 'skips'. Use them wisely, once you use one you have to them wait another 3 on/off cycles before you can use your next 'skip'. Penalties for overusage of skips include, but are not limited to; 5 minute power sprints, saddle removal for remainder of session and the ultimate sanction-switching from music to a full 200Km Tour de France stage with commentary by Phil L and Paul S (1 minute power sprint every time you hear 'sport of professional cycling' or reference to Lance)
• If you are unlucky enough to get a song longer than 7 minutes for your 'on' interval, then you may-at your own discretion-choose to do the next 'on' interval in the small ring. If you're chicken that is.
• If 'We Are The Champions' comes up, it is mandatory to practice victory celebrations for the duration no matter whether you are in the gym, at home, or on the road...or how ridiculous you look.
• If a ballad comes up....just stop. Do you think Jens listens to ballads? ' I even had a black shirt with a Metallica print and ripped off arms, total hardcore fan, but my kids told me not to wear it anymore...' exactly.

I'm fairly sure we (yes we) could come up with a scoring system for 'The Interval Game' based loosely on badassery of songs and interval length....contributions welcome.

There would have to be serious penalties for Michael Bublé. Just saying.

I Earned £20 Per Hour On Sunday.

No this isn't one of those 'get rich quick' spammy things before you hit the back button. Just an observation that for approximately 1 hour 30 minutes of racing on Sunday I came away with 30 quid. Not bad eh? It could have been more though as I was 3rd loser....or 4th as I prefer to call it! I am not one of those 'win or nothing' people, and always try to be pragmatic about stuff-especially racing. It's impossible to race a bike expecting to win every time you compete-there are just too many variables; the last year has taught me just how important patience is in this sport.


If I were to plot a graph of my placings this year I would see a pleasing upwards trend with each result (bar one) being higher than the previous (although to be fair that's not that difficult, with 30somethingth at Pimbo back in March and then 4th on Sunday with 3 races in between!) I have also realised that for whatever reason I am one of those people that takes a while to 'warm up' into things. That was shown last year when I got sod all points until June, then finished in early September on 48! On a separate note, I did two split days last week, with intervals Tuesday and Thursday morning followed both times by chaingangs. Give it a go if you haven't already, it's a good use of time!


So on to Sunday. It was a shorter than normal race at around 40miles (some people say they only did 38m while the Commisaire said at the briefing it was to be 41...so work that one out) so I was prepared to have to be a little more proactive than normal. Whilst recceing the course before going to sign on I came to the conclusion that the best place to get away would be on the 'climb' which connected two sides of the square making up the course. Long story short, I made a couple of other guys I knew to be strong aware of my intentions (it's hard whispering in someone's ear in the middle of a bunch let me tell you ;D), attacked on said climb on lap two and hey presto! John Agnew from the Lune club came across immediately which I was pleased about, as I knew he is a strong rider who is more than willing to work. I was even more pleased when 3 more guys bridged across to us about 1/4 of a lap later (as by that point I was, to be technical about it, breathing out of my arse), we immediately settled down into a rhythm maintaining the gap we'd made and that was when I knew we were on to something good. Everyone was willing to come through and do their share of the work and crucially, they all seemed to know what they were doing. The break I was in for a short while at Old Hutton the other week did have one or two guys that clearly didn't really know how to do through and off, and that completely f**ed up our chances there-so I was quite pleased to have forced the break, and more importantly that strong savvy riders had bridged!

Said strong savvy riders.

So thanks to the strong cooperation of the break, and also thanks to the fact that about 1/6th of the starting bunch was in said break, it was 5 of the original 6 that contested the finale (one guy having been dropped a lap or so previously). I was personally not convinced of my chances for victory, as believe it or not, it was my first proper breakaway (as in, first one that had lasted more than a lap or so) and while chaingangs supposedly replicate breakaway situations I wasn't exactly confident in being the freshest at the end. Besides, I was more interested in ensuring we stayed away-to quote Cancellara (perhaps indirectly) 'better to guarantee yourself a podium or top 5 then gamble it all away on trying to win'. Or something. Of course he was talking about Milan-San Remo, and not some poxy 3/4 race near Lancaster...anyway! So yeah, my rationale was I was willing to perhaps do more work than the others in order to guarantee a top 5 (and decent points haulage) than just sit in and hope the others were willing to carry me to the finish and that we wouldn't get caught. Unfortunately, due to the twisting nature of the course and the lack of radio communication for the organisers we had no real idea as to how much of a gap we had. As it happened it was probably around a minute-two minutes, but you never know! Count the number of times breaks have been brought back literally at the last minute due to the old 'cat and mouse' shenanigans...

An attack with about 3 miles to go by eventual winner James Knox shed one member of the break (and nearly killed me off too) but I eventually regrouped with the other two ahead and...erm...sat there in severe pain while we got back onto James's wheel. Four of us to contest the finish. The other Lune rider opened up the sprint right out of the final corner (which was a looooong way out from the finish!) which kinda killed me off. I just didn't have enough in my legs to get onto the wheels as the other two followed the effort. I had to be content with slowly winding my sprint up and hoping that somebody blew! They didn't as it happened, but I only finished a handful of seconds down at the end. All good fun! 


I should be on 9 or 10 points now, which is fewer than I'd hoped but still more than this time last year! Now to take a break from racing for a month or so and get my nose in some books. It's that time of year again.


Thanks for reading! (if you got this far)


P.S:Sorry for not posting in so long.


P.P.S: Sorry for long post.

10 Day Time Trial

Long time no see. How's things? I have had a TON of work to do over the past week or so, and through doing my French Presentation on le Tour ce matin I have finished! Well kinda. I still have quite a bit to do for after Easter, but I think that can wait a few days :)


Did my first 10 mile TT of the year tonight with the Ystwyth Club. The course would best be described as 'lumpy' with 300ft or so of climbing. I'm no tester, so don't really know what would constitute a 'fast' course-but I can definitely say that tonight's was not a 'fast' course. It was however, good fun. Made a nice change to be having to fight the terrain and road a bit as opposed to just sitting on a busy A road like back home. 


I have, unfortunately, seemingly forgotten how to pace myself over 10 miles though. Probably comes from still being in Hill Climb mode whenever I don my skinsuit. Or not. 


So anyway, much fun was had by all. Us students rolled up 'en masse' (there were 3 of us) and intimidated everyone else with our obvious professionalism (Max loudly asked where you were supposed to pin your number on), decimated the field (we placed 3rd, 12th and 13th) and rolled off into the sunset looking cool (by cool, I mean cold. We-or was it just me-had rather underestimated how chilly it could get at 8pm)


I managed a 24:47 at a decent average power (although below what I was aiming for), good enough for 3rd although a long way down on 2nd and 1st. It's always fun doing a new course, and I reckon there's a good 30 seconds to be had just from knowing where the hard bits are, where to push, where to wind it up to finish etc. I definitely could have paced it better as well, I had a few too many big drops in power from just pushing too hard and was nearly sick just before reaching the turn-which was a new experience!


So yeah. There's probably loads more I should talk about/moan about/discuss/bore you with, but to be completely honest my brain is barely functioning properly as it is. So with that, I bid you good night-but rest assured lots more bloggy fun is on the way! (Providing I don't get loads of work/forget again)


Ciao.


Oh no wait, full results here: http://www.ystwythcc.org/news/category/events/club-tt/ :D