Unsure what to do today, I skipped my usual routine of working Saturday morning, opting instead for a long lie in (rising circa 10am rather than 7am), followed by a lazy lounge around drinking a nice cup of coffee and wondering where to go. The only thing I knew was I wanted to do a long bike ride, and ideally a bit of climbing.
Round here, climbing routes are in one direction, and the other way – out to the coast is pretty much flat. There’s the possibility of heading south, but that involves some busy main roads that I wanted to avoid. So my mind wandered out towards Jeffrey Hill.
Thing is, I’ve kinda hammered the Hill lately. I love the climb, but wanted to do something different.
On the back of my mind for a few weeks has been the idea of hitting up Birdie Brow once more. This is a climb I’ve only attempted once and I would say is amongst the hardest climbs in my local area. It’s brutal.
The crazy thing is, the last time I tried this was ~2 years ago, and not only was I considerably less fit, but I had fallen off and broken my wrist. How the hell I did this, I have absolutely no idea.
Plotting a route in the Garmin, I knew I’d be hitting up three climbs today and would be out for ~2 hours. Being super sunny out, I popped on bib shorts, fingerless gloves, and everything else up top was winter gear. I skipped the jacket, but folded it up and put it in my jersey pocket. For nutrition I took a protein bar, banana, and some trusty Haribos. As we only had water on tap, that’s all I took in my bottle.
Whilst the sun was shining today the wind was equally out in force. I was less than 200m from the house before I stopped and jacketed up. That didn’t come off from that point onwards. For the first thirty minutes my fingers and legs were cold for sure, but once they’d acclimatised / sufficiently numbed, I was fine.
The Garmin reckoned on two climbs along the way before the third and final climb – Birdie Brow.
I’d disagree with this. Yeah, the first one was definitely up hill. The second? Meh. I don’t know why that one counted. I’d class Birdie as a brutal climb, obvs, but there was a third grinding ascent out of Ribchester… so I’m not sure how the Climb Pro calculates these things, but I’m not in full agreement here.
I knew I was roughly heading in the direction of that hill left of centre. I thought that was Birdie Brow but no, it’s behind there. The first two climbs were along that stretch though.
In my head I had planned to get a photo or two of Birdie. Alas, no.
What I completely forgot was how Birdie Brow starts.
It’s at the bottom of a fast descent. In front of me was another cyclist and in my head I was thinking I wanted to stop for a wee before I hit the climb. However I couldn’t find a side street or path, I had a car behind me, and when I came to the bottom of the descent Birdie Brow involves a right turn – so foolishly, like last time, I braked, lost all my speed and then bam, into the bottom of the climb.
It’s deceptive.
See, I’m coming down Bailey Bank and then there’s that junction to the bottom. If you nail it, you can carry a ton of speed into the start of the climb. And it’s steep straight away so whilst it would all get scrubbed, it’s definitely worth it to give you an extra five or ten free metres.
Still, I wouldn’t have been challenging for the KOM as literally it’s twice as fast as I managed it. Something like 5 minutes compared to my 10.
I was lulled into a false sense of security.
It starts off in the yellow on the climb pro – but I wasn’t looking at that view.
My issue with the Climb Pro is that it doesn’t tell me anything actually useful. I needed to pace my climb – thinking 3.65w/kg ideally.
I had the regular stats view up – immediately seeing I was well over 4w/kg. Whoops. No matter how much I tried to ease off, I couldn’t seem to get below 4w/kg… sounds nuts, but it feels like I’m going too slow, so I need to work harder to stop myself from falling off.
And then of course, comes the blood red portion of the climb. I had already kinda burned my fuel going into the bottom bit thinking hey, this is nowhere near as bad as I remember.
Oh Chris.
You fool.
The middle portion is brutal. Absolutely savage.
Last time I had to stop just before that final quarter, where it gets stupid steep for a brief period.
Fortunately, not so today. It was hard going. I had my jacket, gilet and jersey unzipped. I was sweating hard, puffing profusely, and generally suffering as only a cyclist can up a steep climb. But I made it. Hoorah.
Again, I didn’t stop at the top for photos. The requirement for a wee had disappeared on my during the pain of the climb but it came roiling back after I’d summit-ted and the wintry wind chill wasted no time cooling me right back down.
As I was coming down from the climb I came across a rather magnificent historic looking castle or something. Turns out it was Stoneyhurst Boarding School. In the second photo there was a rather posh game of rugby taking place behind me, but I was so close I didn’t want to take photos and look like any more of a weirdo than I already did taking pictures of their school. Still, who the hell does PE on a Saturday? Boarding schools are weird, no doubt about it.
From there I descended via a very busy Gallows Lane into Ribchester and gave a solid effort on the climb back to Longridge.
That was enough for me to call it a day by that point. Sadly I still had a ~30 minute ride home to get through.
Amazingly I’m not that tired from this one.
Averaging 180w for a 2 hour ride blows my mind. There was a time not that long ago where that was my limit for a 30 minute ride.
Making it to the top of Birdie Brow today feels like a real achievement. Honestly, that climb is just super savage. Really good, but about my limit and I can’t say I gave it my absolutely best effort either – only about 90% of what I was absolutely capable of having already got an hour or so in the very cold legs. Hey, say what you want about smooth legs for cycling but I’ll keep my hair to fend off just some of that northern wind.
Overall then, very pleased with this ride. I enjoyed it, and without any time constraints I could relax and go with it.
Tomorrow is going to be recovery… got an idea for a route in mind, but yeah, nothing strenuous… at all!
