The Annual Lunacy Climbing Challenge Chatzone

[Dogtrousers]

Chapeau @Sea of vapours !! That is just crazy. Even if I broke all the routing rules and did reps of my nastiest climbs I'd struggle to match that.

I thought I had some tough planned rides up my sleeve, but all of a sudden they seem a bit tame and gentle.

I'm going to voice an unpopular opinion. Possibly even a troll. On a par with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door: I don't like the term HR. I much prefer to move the decimal point one place to the left and call it overall climb percentage, which is unitless. That has to be the nerdiest, nichest troll ever ... In this thread, at least.

 

[Sea of vapours]

Thanks @Dogtrousers . Multiple roads to or from the same place is a handy configuration for this challenge! @ColinJ will beat this ascent rate if he manages to the do the thoroughly nasty route described above though. The great thing about this route is that the views from the Kirkstone Pass are excellent and doing all three roads provides a long view of all of them :-) I'd suggest that all those urban / suburban up and backs are very tough as a result of the relative lack of view!

Is that an unpopular opinion? I'm not sure. I'm not too attached to HR either, especially as it is also an abbreviation for heart rate. That said, I'm not convinced that we especially need a unitless target number do we? And would you wish for 'OCP'?

 

[ColinJ]

Done! Well, my highest HR route is done anyway. I won't be able to improve on that without driving somewhere fairly distant so that pretty much means that, at 39.0 m/km, or a thousand metres in 25.6km, that will be my 'best' Lunacy Climbing ride. I may do it again too as it's somewhat easier than my routes from Askrigg using Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar, despite having a slightly higher HR. Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar have very steep sections on all four sides, whereas this route is each of the three roads up to the Kirkstone Pass and they are, relatively, quite steady gradients apart from a couple of sections on 'The Struggle' up from Ambleside. It was a lovely day too: sunny throughout and consequently definitely in the 'warm' category of days, with minimal wind.

In the graphic the climbs are, in order: south side of pass, The Struggle, north side of pass.
View attachment 584799

I was thinking about something like that when looking at those roads on the 'Name That Road' thread. Looks great!

Multiple roads to or from the same place is a handy configuration for this challenge! @ColinJ will beat this ascent rate if he manages to the do the thoroughly nasty route described above though. The great thing about this route is that the views from the Kirkstone Pass are excellent and doing all three roads provides a long view of all of them :-) I'd suggest that all those urban / suburban up and backs are very tough as a result of the relative lack of view!

TBH, I won't enjoy my route if/when I do it. I especially don't like the idea of turning round round halfway up the climb to Eastwood Road and heading straight back down again once enough elevation gain has been accumulated. I'll do it once for the challenge, but then plan nicer routes where I actually get to go somewhere and enjoy some time looking around. They will be gentler, but can still be pretty tough.

I'm going to voice an unpopular opinion. Possibly even a troll. On a par with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door: I don't like the term HR. I much prefer to move the decimal point one place to the left and call it overall climb percentage, which is unitless. That has to be the nerdiest, nichest troll ever ... In this thread, at least.

Funnily enough, I often calculate average gradients for my hillier rides. Yes - it would have made more sense to have stuck to that!

 

[Sea of vapours]

TBH, I won't enjoy my route if/when I do it. I especially don't like the idea of turning round round halfway up the climb to Eastwood Road and heading straight back down again once enough elevation gain has been accumulated. I'll do it once for the challenge, but then plan nicer routes where I actually get to go somewhere and enjoy some time looking around. They will be gentler, but can still be pretty tough.

Agreed on that. Whilst trying to find suitable locations for this challenge, I've produced several routes where I decided not to do them as they'd be too irritating; or, more precisely, I decided to forego some climb rate in order to reduce the annoyance. For example, there's one I'll probably do which will go over Buttertubs and up to Tan Hill, then return. Ideally, to reach 1,000m ascent in the shortest distance, I'd turn around about 800m from the Tan Hill Inn as the last bit is almost flat, but that would then be a 100km ride missing out the 'top' of the route: somewhat inelegant I thoiught!

 

[Dogtrousers]

Another route on the North Downs ridge today. Took in a number of locally famous hills: Rowdow Lane (oddly I've never been up there before), Exedown and Old Terry's Lodge, and an old favourite, Vigo Hill.

Pretty much an out and back route, nearly all roads traversed in both directions. First a clockwise loop, then an out and back to Vigo, then the same loop, but anticlockwise.

Interestingly this ride took my total past an Everest. It's taken me 7 fairly tough rides to do this, which puts into perspective what a massive achievement Everesting is.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Another one done. Takes my cumulative total over 10,000m in this challenge.

This time a very simple out-and-back route. No loops, nothing fancy. I started in Westerham, on the A25, rode up on to the Greensand Ridge and zigzagged up and down the steeper southern side.

It's a long time since I rode up Hosey Common Lane. It's steep (10-15%) but what makes it hard is the tarmac is badly broken up and the surface is covered with mud and debris. I recall the last time I rode up it my front wheel somehow tripped over a stick and I fell off. Fortunately no mishaps today.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Done another. I planned a short-ish ride to be followed by an afternoon in front of the telly so I set off on an out-and-back convoluted ride up and down the hills of South East London. Unfortunately I had a minor mechanical about three quarters of the way through, which involved a bit of faff, took time, and broke my rhythm so I rode a more direct, less wiggly and thus less hilly route back. I still managed 1,332m in 59.4km - overall 2.25% That's the lowest of my challenge rides so far, but above my personal 2.0% limit so it will do. Without the direct return it would have been more like 2.5%.

Ultimately it may not be my lowest - I've got another planned for the Ashdown Forest. Despite having a few big-ish climbs, it's hard to devise a 1000m route that follows the rules and has an overall percentage of much more than 2.0%

 

[ColinJ]

Blimey - that is a complicated route!

I'm down in Devon at the moment. It would definitely be possible to work out some crazily hilly routes here. The middle section of my recent 106 km ride had nearly 25 m of ascent per km and that was without looking for steep hills!

I'll wait until I get home before starting this challenge. My back and neck (and head!) are very sore and won't recover until I leave this lovely but low-slung cottage. The only way I have stopped walking into low doorframes is by walking around semi-permanently bent over...

 

[ColinJ]

Well, I finally did one!

My target is to climb the 1,000+ m in no more than 40 km...

I previously posted this in the wrong Lunacy chat zone...

I have worked out a sane and appealing climbing route. My target was to do my 1,000 m in 40 km or under. This route is actually very close to 40 km, but I may have to add a few hundred metres to get the last few metres of ascent in. I am not going to discount the route though because it is such an obvious one from here - strenuous, scenic, and mainly on quiet roads.

That's the one I did this evening. My mapping software said that that the route had about 1,075 m of ascent but it always tends to inflate the figure. I did some contour counting on my digital OS map and thought it was more like 1,015 m. I kept a small climb in reserve in Todmorden just-in-case and sure enough, I arrived back in town with my GPS showing about 39 km and 988 m of ascent. With the extra climb added, I had managed 1,020 m of ascent in exactly 40 km.

It's a route that I have ridden all of before, but I don't tend to concentrate it down to 40 km. Its a tough little loop, with a very hard first climb which I did from almost a cold start - not a great idea! Next time, I will do a little warm-up loop first.

I am fit enough for this route, but it took it out of me. I think I'll leave any crazy-hard ones for a month or two! I'm sure that I will be doing this one several times a year.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Decided to take the challenge further afield with a route round the Ashdown Forest. Although it has some significant climbs, it was hard to devise a route according to the rules that packed in loads of climbing so the result was tough, but statistically mediocre with an HR of 22.7

I decided to get with the gravel trend by including a bit of off-road. Some scary steep downhill on a track made with big loose stones followed by a much less scary long climb on generally hard packed trail.

I sat down under an apple tree to eat my sandwiches after the ride. The subsequent ride to Sevenoaks station was made a bit harder by the presence of 2kg of apples in my rack bag

 

[Sea of vapours]

That's considerably less complex than your earlier efforts and with an entirely different type of hazard by the sound of it (loose stones versus assorted urban/suburban car activities). You've reminded me that I must get on with mine now that the non-climbing Lunacy Challenge is done.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I went a bit off piste today. I used a route devised for the challenge described in this post

Both challenges require a loop, with any section of road only allowed to be used once in a particular direction. But the CC challenge requires at least 1000m in the shortest distance, whereas the other challenge needs the maximum climb in less than 100k. Unfortunately I made a navigation error so I bust the 100k limit by 1km. It includes two of Simon Warren's top 100 (Toys and Yorks hills).

The result was a longer ride with a relatively low overall climb of 2.2%

I probably wouldn't have done this if there were lots of people in this challenge, because I'm breaching the spirit of the challenge, although not not the letter of the challenge rules. But I wanted to ride this route anyway, so I thought why not throw it in.

My super intelligent Garmin wasn't impressed. It told me that I was "overreaching" and that my training status was "unproductive". Well it can fup right off.

Here it is:

 

[ColinJ]

Despite it being my idea, I suspect that I won't get close to completing the challenge this year and won't even say that I am doing it in future!

There is plenty of climbing round here but unless I travel some distance from home I am stuck with a few obvious choices and most of them involve lots of steep stuff crammed in early in the rides before I am properly warmed up. Another way I could do it would be to extend my minimum target distance, but then I would just be doing what I normally do...

I still like the idea of this challenge but locally I can't find the kind of interesting variations that @Dogtrousers is coming up with.

I reckon it will have to be renamed The Annual Dogtrousers Climbing Challenge next year!

 

[Sea of vapours]

That's a pretty entertaining route :-) Certainly appears to meet the criteria, and I personally like combining multiple objectives in one ride (Thursday's trundle was my monthly AAA audax, the Metric Century and the 32km in the centre was this challenge, so that was pleasing). Dogtrousers' route above looks rather fine both in plan view and in elevation, ticks off two of SW's 100 and also nearly fits his 'most in less than 100km' challenge, so certainly gets my vote.

I do hope you'll get a /few/ more done though, Colin, particulary your uber high climbing percentage one posted above somewhere.

 

[ColinJ]

I do hope you'll get a /few/ more done though, Colin, particularly your uber high climbing percentage one posted above somewhere.

Yes, I think I should aim for an honourable failure rather than just 'doing a López' (abandoning in a strop)!

I want to do that toughie but I worry slightly about the health risks! (I'm not entirely joking - my heart has the rhythm flutters again tonight and that was after just doing a flat singlespeed ride to Hebden Bridge and back.) On the steepest ramps I'll have to do it at the slowest speed that I can manage without having to put a foot down.