The Annual Lunacy Climbing Challenge Chatzone

[Dogtrousers]

Funny incident while riding up Toy's Hill. Toys is about 2km and 8% overall but gets gradually steeper the further you go, up to about 14%. I'd like to say I pace myself but that's not true, I just start grinding and keep grinding. But if you want to get up it quickly, and don't pace yourself, things can go horribly wrong ...

I was passed by a guy who was riding utterly effortlessly. Clearly very fit. Moments later I was passed by a rider with a much more muscular approach to riding - stamping on the pedals. I just kept plugging away and eventually was surprised to see that I had closed the gap on Mr Muscular. He may have heard me behind him because he stood up and started dancing on the pedals. Not very balletic Contador-style dancing, more clog dancing. He pulled away from me but when we got to the 14% section he pulled over, and slumped over his handlebars. Anyway I found Mr Effortless at the top and pulled over and asked if he was waiting for someone riding a blue bike. He was. I let him know he might be in for quite a wait.

 

[ColinJ]

I used to work with a young Mr Muscular. He came out on a few bike rides with me. He couldn't pace himself at all and after our first ride ended up slumped at the roadside with his head between his knees.

He didn't really 'do' gears...

I had a friend with enormous legs (he was a bodybuilder) and he insisted on using leg strength to climb in a massive gear, rather than spinning a lower gear. I used to warn him about it but he wouldn't listen and immediately after one such warning, his chain exploded!

 

[Sea of vapours]

Finished.

For the finale to this challenge - and I really don't think I'll be doing any extras between now and 31st December! - I wanted to make the whole ride as short as possible for the thousand metres, so I put the bike in the car for only the second time ever and drove it to the top of the Kirkstone Pass, then descended and ascended each of the three routes to it. I did The Struggle first, as it's hardest, then the A592 from the north, and then finished with the A592 from the south, which is probably the easiest since it's the longest horizontally. My earlier ride on this route was from the bottom of the south side, which feels less pleasing, mainly because it's an annoyingly asymmetrical route that way, but also because I had to cycle to get there. Starting at the top was much neater. I'm pleased to have finished, though I'd probably not have chosen to do the last four in seven days, ideally, but my earlier lack of getting on with it and the impending iciness made it necessary.

It's been an interesting challenge and I'm glad I did it That said, whilst it was undoubtedly worth doing once, I don't imagine I'll do it again as it produces highly artificial sub-routes within longer rides and constrains the cycling around them, as we've discussed earlier in the year. Within cycling distance of home, I have essentially three areas where the required ascent rate is possible whilst getting back to the starting point: Askrigg at 40km each way plus the Lunacy loop; Settle at 15km each way plus the Lunacy loop; and the Kirkstone Pass, which is about 70km each way. All great roads, but it did get a bit repetitive, even with varying the direction and exactly which climbs I did in which order. Definitely a fun exercise though, both in finding routes and actually doing them.

It's also been very entertaining watching @Dogtrousers highly inventive routes of large numbers of small, steep hills And I'm still looking forward to seeing @ColinJ report completion of his mighty*, HR=42 route, the map for which he posted earlier: https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/the-annual-lunacy-climbing-challenge-chatzone.269598/post-6383311 (*Mighty insane that is.) Or even the 44.6 posted a few posts later in the thread. The first of those, when plotted on the OS on-line service, gives an HR of 45 - ugh! And may I remind you of this posting... (My emboldening.) :-)

I will do my horribly hard out-and-back local ride just one time, so that...

1. I can say that I have done it.
2. To remind me to forget about it and to never mention it again***!

 

[ColinJ]

Well done!

I (clearly!) have yet again wimped out of one of my own challenges, but I do intend to do a few more this year unless ice arrives soon and puts a stop to it. (Many of the roads that I would use don't get gritted.)

It's also been very entertaining watching @Dogtrousers highly inventive routes of large numbers of small, steep hills...

Yes, I have enjoyed that too.

And I'm still looking forward to seeing @ColinJ report completion of his mighty*, HR=42 route, the map for which he posted earlier: https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/the-annual-lunacy-climbing-challenge-chatzone.269598/post-6383311 (*Mighty insane that is.) Or even the 44.6 posted a few posts later in the thread. The first of those, when plotted on the OS on-line service, gives an HR of 45 - ugh! And may I remind you of this posting... (My emboldening.) :-)

Ha ha... I was looking at the 44.6 route today and thinking how I don't like going straight back down a hill that I have just climbed, and I certainly don't like u-turning halfway up a hill. On top of which, I may not be fit enough to survive it!

I have been rejigging it and came up with a new target - beat the HR of @Sea of vapours' Kirkstone Pass ride! It doesn't have to be by much...

My plan now is to do this warm-up along the A646 from Todmorden to Southward Bottom, then turn and head up the Long Causeway. I will drop down to my starting point at Shore, partway down the hill. I can adjust the start finish point later to make sure that I have optimised it - no problem since I will be dropping down through it at the start and climbing back up through it at the end.

Then I do the main part of the original route as far as Cross Stone...

Next, I avoid 'hated u-turn on a steep hill' by doing a longer anti-clockwise triangular loop via Great Rock...

Now do the original leg in reverse. As I said above, if it turns out that my notional start/finish point didn't give me quite enough ascent, I can shift it up the hill. If I have ascent in hand, I could move it down the hill if I wanted to.

Finally...

... continue up the hill, turn right at the top and continue climbing to the high point then descend to Blackshaw Head. From there, home via Great Rock, and Cross Stone. Alternatively, if totally knackered by the time I get back up to Shore, perform 'hated u-turn on a steep hill' and go home the easy way!

Right, that's the route planned. Now I have to get to work on my excuses... "I was frightened to open the front door in case the neighbour's dog ate my bicycle" - that kind of thing!

 

[Sea of vapours]

That looks suitably unpleasant. It certainly does exceed my HR on the Kirkstone roads though. Any moment now, you'll have ice risk as a get out clause for another few months.

Making the rash assumption that @Dogtrousers won't be doing this again next year, he and I can metaphorically sit back and watch you do it next year :-)

 

[ColinJ]

The qualifying part (Shore to Shore) is almost exactly 25 km so if the measured ascent were exactly 1,000 m then that would be HR = 40. With any adjustment of the start & finish point, it would probably be in the range 39.5 to 40.5.

The thing is, I'm not sure whether to go by my figures from the OS map, or my Garmin, GPS elevation data often being a bit unreliable...

I will check that the GPS elevation figure on my doorstep is correct when I get home. I know what the elevation of my house is and have an elevation point set so the GPS is corrected automatically when I set off. I also know the elevations of the high points of the ride are. If the data looks right at the summits and back at home, I will trust the GPS. If it looks unreliable then I will use the start/finish at Shore as planned and use my calculated elevation gain for the main loop. The first time I looked, it was something like 1,075 m but I will check it more closely.

My cunning plan of starting off going down from the midway point of the first hill means that I can avoid the nightmare scenario of doing a very tough loop but finishing just short of the ascent target.

Hmm, I just saw the weather forecast for the week ahead. It looks like my bad weather excuse will be available shortly...!

I also want to ride the other new loop that I had planned, out Luddenden way. It would have to be a mild winter for me to do much more than those 2 now. I have had some near misses on hilly winter rides round here, plus actual crashes. I don't want any more of them. Also - my best bike gets put into hibernation as soon as the roads are first gritted and I will NOT be doing this challenge on my singlespeed bike!

Making the rash assumption that @Dogtrousers won't be doing this again next year, he and I can metaphorically sit back and watch you do it next year :-)

NO WAY!

I tell you what... As a compromise - I will continue my challenge into next year and try to complete it in 12 calendar months rather than 1 calendar year. If I get these 2 rides done soon, then I would have to do 8 more by August 9th. That sounds doable!

I will plan some qualifying loops that I can do on my trips to Devon next year. I plan to have 2 or 3 holidays down there before that date in August.

 

[Sea of vapours]

Hmm, I just saw the weather forecast for the week ahead. It looks like my bad weather excuse will be available shortly...!

This is why I did four in the last seven days!

The thing is, I'm not sure whether to go by my figures from the OS map, or my Garmin, GPS elevation data often being a bit unreliable...

I took the approach of using the on-line OS maps to determine elevation in all cases. That amounts to the same as counting contours presumably, though it's somewhat easier. I'd not use 'raw' GPS data as vertical readings really aren't at all good. Barometer-based readings should be good though. Mostly, the readings from my watch, which does use a barometer for altitude, have been within 1-2%. i.e. 10-20m of the OS maps predicted figure. Yesterday, for example, the watch claimed 1,015m and the OS had 1,000m. Strava, after 'Correct elevation' claimed 997m, so all pretty close. My Wahoo on the other hand, which is purely gps based, gave me a generous 1,057m. Arguably, the key thing is to use something consistently, except that gps errors in altitude over these sort of distances and elapsed times are not especially systematic, so not even that redeems them unfortunately. In other words, I'd suggest stick with the OS. It has the distinct advantage of removing uncertainty too (as in, you do the route and don't worry about any anomalies in the recording).

I tell you what... As a compromise - I will continue my challenge into next year and try to complete it in 12 calendar months rather than 1 calendar year. If I get these 2 rides done soon, then I would have to do 8 more by August 9th. That sounds doable!

Funnily enough, I very nearly suggested that earlier. The 'elapsed 12 months' thing is very much in the spirit of Lunacy challenges, being somewhat divorced from a calendar year, so that sounds like a winning plan to me.

 

[Sea of vapours]

The attached gpx, based on my OS on-line method of determining elevation, comes in at 998m ascent, so if it's what you've drawn in your map extracts then I'd certainly accept that as higher HR than the Kirkstone route (though less scenic, arguably).

 

[ColinJ]

The attached gpx, based on my OS on-line method of determining elevation, comes in at 998m ascent, so if it's what you've drawn in your map extracts then I'd certainly accept that as higher HR than the Kirkstone route (though less scenic, arguably).

That's it. Looks like I ought to count from a couple of bends higher to be sure. That would add 25-30 m of ascent.

The views from the hills round here are very good but they are clearly not quite as good as the Lake District, Dales, Highlands etc. (But it is much easier here to nip to the shops for a bottle of milk or a tin of beans! )

 

[Dogtrousers]

I'm glad you enjoyed my daft routes. I'm not sure I did.

As I've signed up for Ride London in May I figured I'd better start riding centuries again so today's ride was the complete opposite of the challenge. A 100 mile ride designed to minimise climbing. Started at home and finished elsewhere to avoid having to climb back over the North Downs. Managed a HR of 8.8! I could have done better but that would have involved a more complex train journey home.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Are we doing this next year? I think I'll have a bash. I also have unfinished business with my "most climbing on a 100k non-repeating loop" route that I bailed out of a couple of months ago.

My main challenge will (fingers crossed) be the imperial century a month so provided I don't drop out that will take precedence. However I might ... just maybe ... try to combine the two sometimes. That is, ride out to a lunacy climbing route, do it, and ride home for a total of 100 miles. But I'd need nice weather and long sunlight hours to try that.

My planned January imperial century route has a formidable HR of 7.8 (1269m in 161km) Off to the flatlands!

 

[ColinJ]

Are we doing this next year? I think I'll have a bash. I also have unfinished business with my "most climbing on a 100k non-repeating loop" route that I bailed out of a couple of months ago.

My main challenge will (fingers crossed) be the imperial century a month so provided I don't drop out that will take precedence. However I might ... just maybe ... try to combine the two sometimes. That is, ride out to a lunacy climbing route, do it, and ride home for a total of 100 miles. But I'd need nice weather and long sunlight hours to try that.

My planned January imperial century route has a formidable HR of 7.8 (1269m in 161km) Off to the flatlands!

I will try to tackle the mega-lumpy loops that I was talking about this year, next year instead, but within 12 months of when I started this year. After that, no thanks!

I have been planning some new hilly forum ride routes to tackle instead of another hill climb challenge to fail!

I came up with a very lumpy metric century which I am slightly worried might exceed my pain threshold! I might attempt it in the spring with my superfit pal Carrie for company to see whether it is worth offering to the CC collective. I could abort my recce ride towards the end to save 15 km and 400 m of ascent if my body packed up under the strain...

 

[Sea of vapours]

I won't be 'formally' doing it again.

That said, a couple of the routes I did this year both qualify for this and are also fun routes, so I may do them again; just not thirteen of them. Further, having just thought about this a bit, i may opt for 'equal number of rides to those achieved by ColinJ', as distinct from 'thirteen'. This would give Colin the opportunity to enjoy sadism, in addition to the normal masochsim :-)

 

[ColinJ]

Further, having just thought about this a bit, i may opt for 'equal number of rides to those achieved by ColinJ', as distinct from 'thirteen'. This would give Colin the opportunity to enjoy sadism, in addition to the normal masochsim :-)

I hope you enjoy all 1 of them!

I've just remembered that Carrie aims to be off to France/Spain again at the start of March which means that my recce ride would have to be at the end of February... brrr!

 

[Dogtrousers]

I thought I'd post this here because it's so nerdy that only people who read this thread could possibly be interested.

I watched a Youtube video recently about Parkrunners who play bingo with the seconds part of their official time. The aim is to finish a Parkrun with all the possible numbers of seconds, ie XX:01, XX:02 etc. The thinking behind this is that form, weather, events on the day and courses are so variable that the seconds part of your time is almost random.

In maths it's a thing called the "Coupon Collector's Problem".

Anyway, I thought "how could I apply this to cycling?" I decided that the last two digits of the total elevation (feet or metres, doesn't matter) would fit the bill. So, have I collected all of the possible last two digits?

Off I go to RWGPS, and after a bit of Excelling I find ... AAAARGH. I have three to go. I've never done a ride with a total climb that ends 19, 22, or 68. But I've done the rest.

According to the maths in the video it will take me on average 183 more rides to get the last 3. (100 rides to get the last one, with a 1/100 chance of getting it; 50 rides to get the penultimate one with a 2/100 chance; 33 rides to get the antepenultimate one at 3/100).

My commonest is 32. I've done eleven rides with an elevation ending 32.

I wish I hadn't done that.

Here's the video by the way.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BstloCx8KDk


Edit If I allow turbo rides and walks (both of which I record in RWGPS) then I have them all . Unfortunately, due to the official rules - that I just made up - these don't count.