12 minute read
A very British madness
by Audax UK
You’d think that being born and raised in the shadow of the Italian Alps, cyclist Paolo Cappo would take the gently rolling English countryside in his stride. But, as he explains, the lung-busting effort required for uphill sprints in competitive hill-climbing is tough in any setting A very British madness WORDS PAOLO CAPPO PICTURES TIM ALLEN, PAUL DEAN AND MARK DAVIES
IN HIMALAYAN mountaineering, the region above 26,000 feet altitude is referred as the “death zone”, due to the irreversible damage to the brain cells caused by prolonged exposure to thin air. Hill-climbing, meanwhile, is a distinctively British cycling pursuit, hence a bit peculiar, if not completely mad. It may not exactly be the death zone – but it feels like it!
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Hill-climbing is an offshoot of timetrialling, with a brief and intense season from early September until the National Championship on the last weekend in October. As Covid-19 decimated Audax activity, I decided to give it a try.
LOCKDOWN
My lockdown began a couple of weeks before it was formally announced. With family and friends in Italy already under tighter restrictions, I saw it coming and cleared my diary of any cycling commitment for 2020. I decided that Audax was going to take a back seat for a while.
Nonetheless, with validated long distance riding gone, I still needed something to look forward to and I took inspiration from a book – A Corinthian Endeavour by Paul Jones, the story of the National Hill Climb Championship.
In late March we were repeatedly told that three months was a realistic timescale to be out of lockdown, so there was a realistic chance that time-trialling, and the hill-climbing season in particular, might resume during the summer and throughout the autumn. The solitary nature of the sport makes it an obvious candidate for racing during a pandemic.
So a deal was struck. I decided I was going to swap the saddle sores of a 20 hour randonnee, for the agony of three minutes in the death zone. I’ve always liked cycling uphill – time to see if I was any good at it! I resolved to sign up early for a local Open double race up Dovers and Saintbury hills in the north Cotswolds, due to take place in mid-September, a reassuringly long way away.
Qualifying races are called “Open” or “A-type” and you need an affiliated club membership to enter, as well as sign up for a free account on the Cycling Time Trails (CTT) website. Audax UK is an affiliated club, but this season I chose to race wearing the Kenilworth Wheelers CC colours. In my head a project was beginning to take shape: I was going to qualify and compete in the National Championship on 25 October, if that was ever going to go ahead.
The more I read about the mad world of UK hill-climbing, the more it made sense: it’s a relatively low budget sport, which, unlike the flat time-trialling big brother, does not rely too heavily on purchasing the latest wonder equipment.
In fact, most competitors seem to ride pretty standard bicycles, often stripped of unnecessary sprockets, nuts and bolts. It’s not uncommon to see a generous use of hacksaws to reduce weight to the extreme. In the past, drilling holes through metal frames was “de rigueur”, nowadays, with composite materials, it seems to have gone out of fashion.
Either way, the equation is simple – to go fast up a hill you need a high power-toweight ratio, so you ought to bring down your weight and build up your power output over the time frame, which in most cases is less than five minutes.
THE WEIGHT
During lockdown, many gained weight and others lost weight, as a reflection of a change in lifestyle. I was lucky enough to be in the latter category. Working from home meant no access to the departmental staff tea room, no bottomless provision of chocolate digestives and nobody’s birthday to celebrate on a weekly basis with cake. I’ve always been pretty disciplined with my food shopping.
You won’t find crisps or biscuits in my trolley, so the BMI was mostly beefed up by the above-mentioned treats and the odd curry night out. Both were now out of the equation and I lost weight fairly rapidly. By May, when businesses began to
PAUL DEAN PICTURE: ©
Paolo Cappo is a 48 year old Italianborn cyclist who these days is based in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. He rides for Kenilworth Wheelers CC, and he organises the popular BRUM 200 BR, a loop of the city which, these days, exists only as a permanent ride. He hopes to be able to reinstate the event in the calendar in the not too distant future.
He says: “I was born in north west Italy, at the foot of the Alps, so for me climbs are the natural cycling terrain and the most obvious challenge. I didn't cycle for many years during my twenties, as I went through University and then moved to the UK to pursue an academic career.
reopen, I was down to 67 kg, from 73 and that kept slowly going down throughout the summer, until I settled at 65.5.
As for the bike, I couldn’t afford a fabulous 6kg wonder bike, so I had to make do with my 9kg Audax beast. I bought a discounted Selle Italia SLR and a pair of Pirelli TT tyres with matching Continental supersonic inner tubes. By September, with bottle holder and bolts removed, some sprockets replaced by alloy spacers, I had a 7.9 kg machine. It’s not a competitive weight, but it’s only 3kg away from the lightest thing you can legally ride within the rules. I can live with giving away a handful of seconds, and keeping a few thousand pounds in the bank.
THE POWER
I’d bought a Stages left crank power meter in February, and now it made total sense to use it. Being able to get reliable feedback for any given effort is invaluable. During lockdown, I kept to a daily routine of riding one to two hours a day, while keeping the power up. Within a month, I could do training sessions with average output in excess of 200 Watts. However, increasing average power is the starting point, but it doesn’t really help in a hill climb. Most races are around the three minute mark, which means they have a fairly high anaerobic component: you are going to produce a lot more watts than you would on a training ride.
My first attempts at my local climb, Edge Hill in Warwickshire, yielded around 320 Watts over the four minute duration. By the summer, the number was up to 350 and it peaked around 360 Watts in September. By slowly chipping away like a stonemason, trying harder and harder, getting into highs of asphyxia I did not think possible, I was as ready as I could have been!
THE RACING
CTT did a great job of providing a regulatory framework for events to be Covid-19 safe and as a result, racing began in late July and by August there were more time-trials around than one could enter. I competed in a few myself, just to get used to the routine of a timed start and finish and how to avoid getting disqualified for trivialities, such as crossing into the wrong side of the road on a bend, or shouting abuse at passing cars, when in sight of a marshal.
I never covered myself in glory, I managed a long 25 minutes over 10 miles, but got stuffed by virtually everybody, including obese competitors with pointy helmets and disc rear wheels. It wasn’t my time yet, my revenge would come!
My debut in hill climbing happened on 6 September, a B-type club event organised by Banbury Star CC, up to Burton Dassett Country Park. A short, sharp burst that the fastest can do in just over one minute. I was timed at 1:28 and finished 13 out of 21 competitors.
Not the best of debuts, but as climbs go, too short for me, one for “power trolls” and I could only manage 450 Watt on the day. The following week I did much better at the Beacon RCC race: 16th out of 31 in the Clent Hills, against a very strong field and my first sub four minute ascent of Winwood Heath Road.
The following week I competed in the above-mentioned Open double race in the Cotswolds. I finished 26 in a field of almost 50 and fifth out of 16 in my age group. Age groups are Juniors (up to 17) Espoirs (up to 22) Seniors (up to 39) and Veterans, my category. To date, this remains my best result in a qualifying event.
September and October were intense, with a race every weekend and sometimes even two. I had mixed results, some very good, like seventh in a field of 30 at the Rugby Velo B-type race in Daventry. I even “won” a race, when only three of us showed up at the event organised by the Birmingham Midland Athletic and Cycling club. On other occasions I did less well, bottom half of the field or even bottom third. You race the competitors who are there on the day, and sometimes the quality of the field is just too high.
Meanwhile, the mighty Reading CC organising machine was in motion and the National Championship was definitively going to happen. The setting was going to be Streatley Hill in Berkshire, a short, steep section of the B4009, which climbs west out of Streatley and Goring, on the way to Newbury. It’s only half a mile in length, but it more than makes up in gradient, being just shy of 13 per cent average, with a section well above 20 per cent.
With two results in qualifying events under my belt, I entered the National with a bit of apprehension and keeping my fingers crossed that my results would be good enough to be selected. As it happens, the organisers had planned for a grand showcase of the sport and anyone who applied got a spot, regardless of results. In some ways, this might have devalued the effort involved to get there, but on the other hand, I was quite happy to be accepted, rather than not!
THE NATIONAL
It was a lovely autumnal morning in west Berkshire on 25 October. It wasn't even cold when I was due to start around lunch time. The forecasted 20 mph wind didn’t materialise. I didn't have the opportunity to test the course, as the road had been closed since early morning, to allow the Junior race an early start.
All I could do was to rely on my memories from July, when I had done a recce with some friends, just in case this day would ever come – these were along the lines of “it's bloody steep and badly surfaced”. I worked out on a good day I was going to be able to climb on the 27T sprocket up the 20 per cent part of it, so tactically not much in it; start like a possessed man and keep going as best as you can till the finish line.
I avoided the embarrassment of falling off at the start, while live streamed on TV, despite a sudden right end drift of the front wheel in leaving the holding frame. I accelerated and settled into an unsustainable 450 Watt pace... the climb started gently, but soon got steeper.
I was still riding the 21T sprocket. Without thinking I shifted to the 24T and ground my way up as the rear wheel began to slip on the wet and rough tarmac. One minute gone and still over 400 Watt output, keep going! Now the gradient was fierce and the only way to manage the wheel spin was to be in the saddle, which lowers the power (and looks bad in the photos!).
I glanced at the Garmin for consolation – another minute to go at least! I managed to hang on and stay on top of the gear, although I had to sit on the saddle again to avoid losing the rear. Paul Jones, calling my name from the side of the road, almost made me smile, but you can’t smile, or the photos will reveal you weren’t trying hard enough!
The brow couldn't come soon enough. I could see it and now I was over it. Someone shouted: “50 metres to go.” Now completely in the death zone, I crawled my way up the false flat with not very much power or speed left and got over the line, tasting blood in my mouth. I could do no more! My time was 3:21.9, a good 18 seconds quicker than my full-on recce in July, but still only good enough for 181st place in the men standings. I can take some comfort by having beaten 31 between other geriatrics and a few slow seniors and even one Espoir, apparently! The winner crossed the line in 2:04.8, which speaks for itself, really.
Driving home, I felt a rare sense of achievement. I am not one for using the word “proud”, but I felt at peace with myself, much in the same way I had felt after my first 400 Brevet. The achievement is not much for the mediocre result, but mostly for having gone through the journey and having finished it with some sort of a bang – maybe not a very loud one, but certainly one that I felt and that meant something to me.
