Enjoying my Christmas break, I managed to get outdoors again today, even if it is / was still wet out there.
Fortunately I timed my ride perfectly (thank you BBC weather app) and was home with 10 minutes to spare before the heavens opened. The early bird, and all that.
Anyway, I went out today without a route plugged into the Garmin, but one in mind at least. I wanted to head out to Beacon Fell, hoping for fairly quiet roads and to enjoy the British sunshine countryside.
Oh, and to hit the steepest climb up that way (that I know of).
I’m not sure I’ve ever successfully tackled this climb. It’s called Crumbleholm Road on Strava (linked below), and is fairly nasty.
800m at an average of 9.6% for ~80m of climb.
It’s the closest thing I’ve yet found in the UK that reminds me of the sights found in the French Alps. Houses on the sides of steep roads. Lovely place to live, so long as it’s not frosty, I imagine.
Weirdly I’m sure I have tried to climb this before, without success. And I do remember it being a bloody hot day that day, too.
Anyway, I tried to pace myself on this one, knowing it gets steep, and then steeper still.
Part of my problem, as of late, seems to be in letting myself get psyched out. I find my heart rate spiking before I’ve even got to the harder part of the effort, pretty much in anticipation of what I know is yet to come.
Another great excuse today was that I was overheating. Full winter kit, including shoe covers, three layers, gloves and jacket, it isn’t the ideal ensemble for a climb. Heck, I struggle in a jersey and shorts.
But yeah, I managed to make it up, but not in a great fashion. And my time sucked.
And when I got to the top, it kicks left into a short and very steep climb for good measure. Imagine Zwift’s Epic KOM & Radio Tower, but compressed into a single kilometre.
So I had to stop at the top of Crumbleholm Road, and I felt defeated as a result. But my heart rate had hit 197bpm – that I had seen on the Garmin (turns out that was my max for the ride) – and my legs had given in.
A part of the problem was that I’d taken my glasses off in the final third of the climb and couldn’t fit them into the holes on my helmet, so ended up with them in my mouth, trying (and failing) not to use them as something to bite hard on as I grit my teeth and ‘powered’ through.
I must have taken at least two minutes rest at the top there, waiting for my heart rate to recover and stabilise, but had that second kicker to get through as I set off again. Even with a few minutes rest I was bushed yet again when I reached the top of that. Thoughts of doing a few laps of Beacon Fell were quickly dismissed.
One fun thing today was getting a full uninterrupted descent of Carwags Lane which was awesome, if not a little hairy in the wet. I guess that’s when I hit the 59.6kph top speed listed above.
On the way home I had time to think over the climb.
Yes, I’d kinda thrashed myself yesterday.
But that’s not the whole picture.
The truth is I’ve dropped off this year. There’s lots of reasons for this, and I will cover them in my yearly review post (which is scheduled for tomorrow – still to be written, mind!). But there’s nowhere to hide.
Anyway, on the plus side I made it up without stopping or giving up, and I didn’t hit the rain, nor delay my ride so long that I wouldn’t have been able to get outdoors because of the rain if I’d waited. Every cloud, etc.
