I don't do a lot of climbing and this year I did even less than usual - VeloViewer tells me I only did 7 categorised climbs this year - although that total is just the hills themselves, not the segments (so any climbs with multiple categorised segements only counts as one) and where I'd done multiple attempts at a climb, I only include it once.
But I did do two new climbs that I'm slightly proud of. First was Kop Hill just outside Princes Risborough - notorious in my neck of the woods as being one of the toughest in the Chilterns and so one I'd avoided out of fear for a long time. But egged on (and paced up) by
@Sbudge, I not only did it, I came in with a time two whole minutes faster than I'd planned for! Turns out as long as you keep your cadence high and you know where the steeper ramps are located, it's not so bad (although I probably wouldn't have said that if you'd have asked me straight after I reached the top!)
The other was the climb into Brill from Oakley. Brill is a village on top of a hill that you can climb into from four different directions, with each side being slightly different in terms of length and gradient. The one from Oakley is the toughest side in my opinion and had been another one I had been avoiding, although this was more because of bad memories - I'd crashed coming down that side of it in 2017, breaking my collar bone. But I put aside my demons and tackled it early in the year and despite struggling at the steepest point, plus having a flashback when I saw the pothole I hit in the opposite lane still had not been repaired, I did make it to the top in one piece.
Five months later, it turned out that my local sportive that I try to enter each year was going to go up that side of Brill Hill as well, but this time I was a lot more prepared and confident. So much so, that the friend of mine I was riding with and supposed to be pacing up the hills (he's fitter and lighter, so normally easily beats me, but he doesn't really do any long rides, so it's my job to keep his pace in check to stop him getting knackered before we even reach halfway) I managed to not only drop, but somehow gap him by about 40 seconds - I didn't realise until I got to the top, when I looked behind me and saw that the person who'd I'd noticed out of the corner of my eye had been on my wheel for the last five minutes was just a random wheelsucker and not my mate! I did apologise when he reached the top, but secretly was very happy with my PR!
