My 20 minute Cragg Vale hill climb challenge

[ColinJ]

[Mod edit: Posts moved and merged from other thread as requested.]

*** I should mention that this climb features on the second stage of next year's Tour de France! ***

My latest Cragg Vale HC ride was today, in the usual SW cross/headwind breezy conditions - time: 34 m 26 s. That is 49 seconds quicker than last time, but I got delayed a few seconds on that occasion by temporary traffic lights, and by chatting to someone. I still have a long way to go to achieve my sub-20 minute goal, but I will try to keep nibbling away at it as my health and fitness continue to improve. My Warfarin dose was increased by 10% last week and I am hoping that that will give my body's clot-busting enzymes a better chance to do their job!

 

[totallyfixed]

You have one problem, dr_pink has another, I just can't motivate her into putting some effort into the hill climbs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/94088661@N02/10671779443/in/pool-ccsudbury/

 

[ColinJ]

You have one problem, dr_pink has another, I just can't motivate her into putting some effort into the hill climbs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/94088661@N02/10671779443/in/pool-ccsudbury/

Ha ha - I like that picture!

My pulse rate goes sky high just watching other people making hard efforts like that now. It was hitting 140-150 bpm when I was watching the track cycling from Manchester on the TV at the weekend!

TBH - I worry that I will never be strong enough to make proper hard efforts again. I am enjoying being out on the bike again, but I have mixed feelings about taking 34 minutes to cycle up the Cragg Vale climb. It's great to be riding up there, but I'll be very disappointed if I can't get my time down by at least another 10 minutes.

I'll try and ride up there once a week or so, subject to bearable weather conditions.

 

[totallyfixed]

Ha ha - I like that picture!

My pulse rate goes sky high just watching other people making hard efforts like that now. It was hitting 140-150 bpm when I was watching the track cycling from Manchester on the TV at the weekend!

TBH - I worry that I will never be strong enough to make proper hard efforts again. I am enjoying being out on the bike again, but I have mixed feelings about taking 34 minutes to cycle up the Cragg Vale climb. It's great to be riding up there, but I'll be very disappointed if I can't get my time down by at least another 10 minutes.

I'll try and ride up there once a week or so, subject to bearable weather conditions.

Setting your sights too high often ends up having a negative impact, remember the rides we did with you? They were either 100 miles or the hilliest possible, no in between, that should be telling you something because invariably you were the one who suffered the most!
Set targets by all means but they must be realistic, for instance, instead of aiming to do Cragg Vale in under 20 mins [beyond most folk I might add, never mind someone over 50] aim to do under 30, then 29 and so on. Increase the distance on your bike but don't try to incorporate too many steeper hills just yet, as someone else said, slowly slowly catchee monkey.

 

[ColinJ]

What those rides told me was that I needed to get back to the fitness I had in 2001 or 2006, when I would not have had a problem with them. And also, that I am a stubborn person who refuses to accept the bleedin' obvious ...?

I am not just 'over 50', but nearer 60, in fact! (I will be 58 in January.)

I know that I have set myself a hard target, and it is one that I might not even have been able to achieve before I got ill, but I will give it a go. (It wouldn't be a challenge if I *knew* that I could do it! OTOH, I am not stupid so I know that I will never win a HC event. It would just be nice to be able to enter my local event and finish in the top half of the field.)

I did the full climb from the blue sign at the bottom, to the district boundary sign at the top, in 23.5 mins in 2006 (aged 50) and that is about 1 km further than the HC course. At 30 kph, that would have taken another 2 minutes, so that means that I did about 21.5 minutes on the HC itself.

At the time, I weighed about 13.5 stone, which was 15-20 lbs above my target weight. I also had a 750 mL bottle on the bike, and was carrying a bag of tools, spares and extra clothing so that amounted to at least another 2 or 3 pounds. Without that extra weight, I reckon I would have been very close to 20 minutes on the HC course and I am sure that I could have made up another 30 seconds on the climb if I had seen how close I was to hitting my target.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. I feel as though I am working with only 1.3 lungs! My scan in June showed significant problems in the left lung and I can feel that it is struggling when I make any effort. Lungs are pretty good at repairing themselves, however, so I will be optimistic and assume that one day I will have 2.0 lungs again!

The way I look at it is that if I achieve my goal despite my recent poor health and fitness, it will be a triumph. If I fail, but get close to it, I will consider that a glorious failure, since I would still be fitter than I had ever thought possible for me!

I have already done the climb a couple of minutes quicker this year, but I had a strong tailwind. It was fun, but I am not going to count that ride. I want to do my ride on one of the rare days when the reservoir at the top is mirror-flat.

Yes ... small steps. I would have done sub-33 minutes yesterday without the headwind, so I will make 33 minutes my next intermediate target.

Winter is coming, and there might not be any more good days on that hill until the Spring. No problem ... I will keep getting rid of my surplus pounds, and get stuck in on my gym bike.

 

[400bhp]

Keep it up fella - great to have such goals.

 

[Rob3rt]

Dreams and goals, distinct things, but a dream can eventually become a goal! Stick at it!

 

[ColinJ]

[PS The order of the posts seems a bit odd, because the ones before this have been merged in from an earlier thread.]

I live a couple of miles from this climb which features on stage 2 of next year's Tour de France!

When I first saw that sign, many years ago, I decided there and then that I wanted to cycle up it in under 30 minutes. It took me a while to get fit enough, but eventually I did, so I needed another goal ...

I wanted to go for a time which would be a challenge, but not totally out of reach. I settled on 20 minutes.

I knew that there is an annual time trial event on that hill and looked up some of the results. The record at the time was 16 minutes-something, so 20 minutes did not seem out of the question. (The record time is now 15 min 52.6 sec, into a headwind!)

I hadn't realised that the HC event did not use the full climb. The HC course is about 1 km shorter. I have decided to be sensible and apply my 20 minute target to the HC course, rather than the longer distance! If I ever manage 20 minutes on the HC course, then I will reset my goal to 20 minutes for the full distance.

The official HC starts at the entrance to the Townson Thornber fuel depot in Mytholmroyd ...

And finishes by the fence on the left and the footpath gate on the right, a couple of hundred metres before you get to the reservoir ...

There is usually a cross headwind on the exposed second half of the climb. I don't think I would ever be able to do 20 minutes in those conditions, so I might need one of the rare days when there is no wind up there. What I will not do, is to take advantage of a tailwind. I want my time to be a genuine non-drafting, non-wind-assisted one!

I have been discussing this in another thread, but I thought it might be interesting to have a dedicated thread for it so I am going to ask the mods to move the relevant posts to this thread.

I am approaching 58 years of age. If you look back over my forum rides over the past 4 or 5 years, you will see that I had been suffering from lack of fitness and a weight problem, and then I got seriously ill last year. I have managed to lose 3.5 stone now, and am only about 1 stone off my target weight. I am still suffering health issues, but hope that most of the damage will heal over the next 12 months.

I will post every time that I beat my previous best.

I may never be well enough to achieve my goal, but let's give it a go, eh?

Some photos from the recent hillclimb event on the Cragg Vale course (starting with dr_pink warming up, and Rob3rt fiddling with his kit!) ...

 

[Archie_tect]

Have you completed it since your recovery from the DVT Colin?

 

[Rob3rt]

Enter the HC next year regardless! Assuming you are healthy enough to do so!

 

[ColinJ]

Have you completed it since your recovery from the DVT Colin?

Yes. My original posts in another thread have now been merged in, but because of the timing, they appear before my original post in this thread! My recent rides are discussed in those earlier posts.

PS I haven't actually recovered from the DVT yet! I am having to be careful not to push too hard and risk making myself ill again, so I expect only slow progress until I feel strong, when I will be able to really get stuck in. (The doctors basically told me to get regular exercise, but to listen to my body and back off when I need to.)

 

[ColinJ]

Enter the HC next year regardless! Assuming you are healthy enough to do so!

Well, I'm healthy enough to get up the climb, but (no disrespect to the brave woman who tackled the event on her mountain bike this year) I'm too vain to enter unless I can do a reasonably respectable time! (I don't want to be standing about at the finish using my dodgy lung as an excuse for my poor performance.)

 

[fossyant]

Have you had a 'test run' yet ?

 

[classic33]

So the sign is the start, where do/have you placed the finish?

 

[Rob3rt]

So the sign is the start, where do/have you placed the finish?

There is another sign at the top somewhere near the reservoir/junction I think. The HC course starts after the sign at the bottom (to avoid a bus stop just after the sign and finishes a bit before the reservoir at the top (probably so people aren't battering it through the finish flat out, completely out of it, then all of a sudden ending up on a junction). The HC course is 4.8 mile or something like that.