BRITAIN’S MOST FANTASTIC STEEP HILLS YOU SHOULD CYCLE UP BEFORE YOU DIE: PART NINE
By: My Hill-Thought-Out Cycling Blog
Tags: Cycling, Fitness Tips, Bicycles, Bicycling, Humor

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR HILL CYCLING EXPERIENCE

More useful than you think

This blog has, in all fairness, been concentrated on advising you what NOT to do. This matters of course. There are so many hills that cyclists should avoid, it would be remiss of me not to point out the explicit dangers of specific hills.

But how about a bit of positive advice from me, eh? It can’t all be avoid, avoid, avoid. Mainly that of course, but not all.

There are the obvious tips about careful route planning. Go to flat places with your bike. Go to hilly/mountainous places without your bike. But this is not an ideal world, and sometimes hills do happen to the best-intentioned cyclist.

So a degree of hill preparedness is probably a wise precaution.

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON

In light of this, choice of bike does matter. I strongly suggest a gradual transition to lighter bikes over time. How often have I read the facile advice to straightaway ‘get the lightest bike you can afford’?

Steady does it. Remember this: get the worst first. Bad bikes early on can provide a solid training foundation for your future performance. They will make you strong quickly. Unavoidably, you will understand how to suffer.

Are you still riding your grandmother’s rusty old sit-up-and-beg with 28" wheels, steel mudguards, rotting wicker basket, dynamo hub and a weight of 50 pounds plus? If so, good. Endure this privilege for as long as you can bear, before trading it in at a reputable secondhand bike shop. You might then get yourself a 35-pound 1970s shopping bike instead, of the kind once inflicted on every female in the land, with a dodgy folding bracket on the frame. Insist on a 3-speed Sturmey Archer hub. It’s for hills after all!

Once you’ve mastered this transition, done some night cycling and worn a groove in the tyre with the dynamo etc, you might return to the bike shop for a further trade-in. Somewhere out back the mechanic will have what you’re looking for: a 28-pound Halfords 1980s ‘racer’ with drop handlebars. It should have a bent 5-speed Huret rear derailleur, will have all-steel wheels and frame of course, and a rusty cotter-pinned chainset that needs hammering back in after each ride. Essentially, it must not feel like a racing bike, even if it looks rather like one.

Following all of this strength training to date, you are now well on your way to deserving a further transition. Back at the shop insist that your next bike has the somewhat lighter Reynolds 531 plain gauge tubing, but not the really good stuff. Allow yourself cheap old aluminium wheels — quick release now allowed — with large-flanged hubs and pitted braking surfaces. Be sure to stick to having the same fattish, semi-perished 700x28C tyres as the last bike though (get the mechanic to swop them on if needed).

Safety alert! Aluminium wheel rims! Your bike will now stop in the rain when you apply the brakes. Extraordinary. Be ready for the shock of this. Enhanced braking is just as well though, for you will notice that you can travel at quicker speeds now. For with no rack or mudguards your bike will weigh only 24 pounds, and have ten gears.

Make sure that for this bike you upgrade to a new condition old-style Brooks B17 leather saddle too; one that hasn’t ‘broken in’ to your shape yet (and that never will). The B17 is the cheaper sort with the rivets sticking out: when you ride hard and your leg muscles tighten, your perineum gets dragged forward onto the front rivet. Not only will this build your character, it will make you learn fast how to ride ‘out of the saddle’ for long periods.

When your character is sufficiently built, you can really start to treat yourself. Avoid the bike shop and go on Ebay to find a mid 1980s Vitus all-aluminium framed bike with glued lugs. A fully double-butted Reynolds 531 or Columbus SL frame and forks would be equally light but way too comfortable. Get even lighter aluminium wheels, and ensure they are shod now with the narrowest possible tyre, 700x19C if you can, and keep them at the maximum 150psi with a track pump. Rock hard you want them.

Sorry, no comfy rubber covers on the brake hoods yet (duh!), and make sure to use the really thin plastic handlebar tape that was good enough for Sean Kelly back in the day. No namby-pamby cycle mitts please — it’s extra weight. Be sure too to have an 80s handlebar stem with a really long reach, so that it creaks when you pull on the bars. And you have to keep the Brooks B17, because you are still waiting for it to break in to the shape of your pelvis, as per manufacturer promise. The long bar stem will ensure you stay pulled nicely forward on the saddle. (Savlon cream and a range of dressings are available from the pharmacist.)

Your twelve speed bike is now only 21 pounds by weight, and is a very responsive ride. Oh yes. You will be able to tell which side of a £5 note you rode over.

At this point in your training, you should be using this latest bike to seek out the roughest, most badly-surfaced lanes you can find. You are by now so enthusiastic that long winter night rides are what you need. Use 1980s cycle lamps that are Ever Ready to run flat and go out: you can go by feel after all.

In all of this I have forgotten to mention the gear ratios. Let’s not get into counting teeth on cogs. All you need to know is this. All of the above bikes do not have low enough gears for going up any meaningful kind of ascent. This is an essential part of the hill-preparedness training I recommend. Climbing even little steep hills on any of these bikes will be a suitably wretched experience.

By sticking to my advice above, you will soon be as strong as an ox, and inured to all manner of suffering. If you fast-track the process, it takes only three years.

Congratulations. You have arrived at the quantum leap of your just reward; trade in the family car for a brand new state-of-the art carbon fibre road bike. It will weigh under16 pounds. Your new machine will fit you properly, have all the gear ratios you could ever want, brake without drama, be incredibly responsive to ride, yet be supremely comfortable. Everything on it will work excellently. Nothing will break. Oh, and it will be fast. Very fast.

STEADY ON THERE

You will doubtless be itching to use your new bike. Sadly you must wait 6–8 weeks for the reconstructive surgery on your perineum to heal. Use this time to learn online about post-1990 clipless pedals, for this is what you will shortly be using. Also: set the brakes on the new steed so that they are slightly binding. This is to stop you believing you have died and gone to heaven the first time you ride it.

GRADUATED HILL TRAINING

For goodness sake, do not get carried away. Never underestimate hills. Go back to square one.

Ride only on pan-flat roads for a few days, getting used to the new bike.

Next, use local knowledge and Google Maps to scour residential urban areas for traffic calming features. Ideally, you want a route with a variety of different speed humps. These will be your ‘baby hills’ to get started on.

In my experience it is best to start on gently sloped humps with a large flat ‘plateau’. They really build confidence.

After a week or so, devise a route that adds in some more ‘aggressive’ speed humps: those raised triangular strips of hard rubber, or the semicircular concrete ones. Be sure not to include too many in your early rides because don’t forget; you have to climb each of these twice, first with the front wheel, then with the back wheel.

Keep up this regime for three to four weeks, adding more speed humps all the time. Use standing starts at the base of humps to make it more challenging.

And really, that’s it. Book yourself a week’s cycling hilliday in the Lake District and vive la difference.

JOKE OVER

Obviously, that last sentence was just a joke. Going to the Lake District or anywhere else stuffed full of steep hills is a terrible idea. The climbing skills I’ve taught you are for use in extremis only, where cycling uphill simply can’t be avoided.

HOW NOT TO TRAIN FOR HILLS

Stick to my above advice and you’ll be fine. I’m conscious however, that there are a lot of very different theories about getting ready for hills bandied about. I feel I should forewarn you of them, so you may avoid them just as you would avoid an actual hill.

Invariably, the bad advice spews forth from the very cycling sickos we have hopefully expunged from readership of this blog. One of the most egregious bits of advice they’ll give you is this: climb hills repeatedly to get better at it, and so that it becomes enjoyable.

How many times have I heard this piece of advice during my undercover investigations? It sounds almost logical doesn’t it?

Way back in 2005, the skeptic in me wished to put this proposal to the test. It also felt like a good opportunity to ‘know the enemy’ by experiencing the actions and mindset of a hill cycling extremist first hand.

Because I was living in Bristol at that time I chose from this point here to this point here to cycle up Broadoak Hill twenty-five times in succession without a break. Why? I wished to scrupulously explore the so-called advice, in order to give it a fair hearing.

After 3100 mind-numbingly tedious metres of vertical ascent (and also of descent) I felt I had significant findings.

Q: Did it make me better at climbing hills? A: I sincerely hope not.

Q: Was it good for my sense of wellbeing and personal development? A: I seriously doubt it.

Q: Did it earn me respect and new friends? A: I’m still waiting.

Reader: do not attempt this folly.

To be continued…