Club hill-climb competition

[Andrew G]

It wasn't cancelled and was good fun, though painful. Flood and big stones were a bit of a test and there were quite a lot of punctures during the course of today's riding.

Struggled up in 3:58 having badly misjudged my pace at the start and dying when it kicked up before the bend. Sylvain won the bubbly by racing up in, I think, about 3mins. Chris got the handicap and Paul the consolation prize. I think Paul had planned this as he had a pannier to carry his bottle home in.

Came back over Box Hill just to add to the pain.

Thanks to Jon for organinsing, Joyce for starting us, and Tamar for pushing off. Shame there weren't more of us but I expect the weather put a few off. Would be good if it could stay on the calendar and get more out next year, although I may drop to a help/supporting role.

[Andy]

Damn, what a pisser. My bad then, sounds good... should have stuck around.

[Jon H]

Results from the hillclimb competition jury:

1 Sylvain Garde 3:03
2 Chris Colford 3:16
3 Paul Hone 3:22
4 Adam Cotterell 3:23
5 Hal Bransby 3:34
6 Paul Dewis 3:40
7 Andrew Green 3:58
8 Conor Cormican 4:06
9 Paul Tunnell 5:13
DNS Kieren Brennan (punctured on the way down to the start)

Well done to everyone who braved the very poor road conditions on Ranmore Common Road, Congrats to Sylvain for the win & Chris for the win on handicap, and thanks to Joyce & Tamar for timing & pushing at the start.

I think my handicap system needs a bit of work, as the handicap results were almost the same as the scratch results.

Hope everyone got back home OK, I think the puncture count was 9 by the time of the competition.

[kieran]

well it was good to get out in the countryside again, I went straigth to the hill climb and missed out the club run. I met Paul and a few others at the bottom and we slowly cycled up to the top, the road was a bit littereed with debris but as we would be going up I figured it would be ok. At the top we met Jon (Thanks for organizing it ), paid our pound and signed on. We hung around for a bit as it was decided to delay the start as we were expecting more people from the club run to turn up (which they did). In the mean time I went and tried out the hill, I did it in about 3:18 but had died by the top, again like many I think I had started too hard. Whilst panting and recovering I got talking to a sports coach who happened to be there and he thought that I had n't left enough time for the lactic acid to clear up from my practice run to my actual run, oh well didn't matter in the end . Anyway I collected my number and then headed down the hill to get to the start, passing some other suffering souls grinding / spinning their way up, but about half way down my rear tyre went dead flat in about a second, very scary as I was flying down hill. slowly walked back up to watch the racers. i think most would agree that it was very hard but short so bareable. Everyone put in good rides and I think with more experience of the hill and in better conditions better times would be done. Sylvain was the deserving winner. Got my tube replaced, thanks to Conor for the track pump (he could have made a fortune if he'd charged, as there was a queue to use it). Anyway on the way back we went via box hill where I took the win over Sylvian (granted he had a big bottle of wine (?) in his back pocket and a (ralpha - very stylish) top on). Which was funny 'cause at the bottom of the hill he had said he thought he'd take it easy for once and enjoy the view on the way up - I guess he couldn't let all the others pass him out. Well, I look forward to the hill climb next year, thanks again to Jon, Joyce and Tamar ( I hope the two 25's went well, especially given the weather this morning).

Good to see some of the guys trying the hill climb and a bit surprised by some absent faces - next year??

[Dr Frigo]

Cheers Jon for organising that. I still owe you a pound!

After a flint-induced puncture on the way to the hill that took me ages to mend, I took a wrong turn (the sign pointing to Ranmore had been twisted 180 degrees ...) and up a 20% climb for about 2km, till I met a touring cyclist who pointed me back in the right way. Think it was almost 1pm by then, and at that point I was half-hoping to be too late to take part.

But there were Joyce, Tamar, Polish Andrew mending a puncture (that's all he seemed to be doing on that day!) and Kieran back from his puncture-prone run. Joyce asked whether I still wanted to ride, and after considering it for a minute I thought I might as well since that was what made me decide to leave a warm bed to join the clubrun under showers at 9am. So I took off all unnecessary gear off my bike and me - seat pack, bottles, jacket, gloves, helmet (had to do something against this unsporty weight-based handicap rule of Jon's ) - and loosened my brakes to avoid any annoying rubbing when out of the saddle. I'd thought about getting rid of the saddle/seatpost altogether, but remembered how you use the saddle against your thighs when out of the saddle, so left them on.

I had been up Ranmore once and could vaguely remember there was a double hairpin near the top, but didn't know how long the lead to it was. Well it was only 1km altogether anyway. The bottom bit was deceptively fast, and I paid a bit for it further up. I had tried since Charlwood to find a convenient tune to mentally help me up those 3-odd minutes, but when going up I just forgot about that and focused on not getting too out of breath, and my gears which were skipping in the second-to-largest cog (25!). I didn't want to kill myself so went up rather conservatively - it's hard to go all-out anyway when on your own and not knowing how fast anyone else went.

Well done to Chris, who hides his game well by seldom joining the clubrun, and Paul who for the first time I managed to edge on the Charlwood sprint - there was just the two of us left at that point!