# The Annual Lunacy Climbing Challenge Chatzone



## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

I have now created a _Lunacy Climbing Challenge_ thread and this has become the Chatzone, but I will leave the discussions in place for reference!

This chatzone thread is for discussion of your _Lunacy Climbing Challenge _rides and supporting other riders in theirs. There will be a new rides thread every year where you should post details of that year's qualifying rides. A full description of the challenge will be provided in the opening post of each year's challenge.

In case any of you are wondering why we calling this the '_Lunacy Climbing Challenge_' but can't be bothered to read the original Lunacy Challenge discussion elsewhere... We settled on a target of 13 qualifying rides a year. That fits neatly with averaging approximately one every lunar month, although it is anticipated that qualifying rides in winter months will be fairly rare, but made up for by multiple such rides in the spring, summer and autumn months. A 'lunatic' was a person suffering from 'lunacy', mental health problems thought to be caused by the malign influence of the moon.

Maybe you have to be just a _little _bit mad to take on this challenge?  


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As usual with climbing challenges, apologies to those in flat areas! 

For those of us with access to significant hills and/or mountains, I just thought of a challenge which might be quite interesting. It is in 2 parts, both of which would be ongoing...

Devise a public road route which accumulates 1,000+ metres of ascent. If you prefer imperial units, you could choose 3,000', 3,250', 3,500' or a more accurate equivalent - 3,281' your target is 3,300 ft. So far, so simple. The catch is - you cannot ride the same stretch of road twice and you must end up back at the starting point, but that does not have to be home - you are free to make it anywhere. You are allowed to cross roads already ridden at crossroad junctions, but must not ride any section of any road twice even in opposite directions. That makes things much more complicated than just doing a mini-'Everesting'. Part one of the challenge is to do this climbing in the shortest possible total distance. Always be on the look out for shorter routes to replace your original choice.
Time yourself on your route. Try to (safely!) beat your fastest time. Improve your times by riding the uphill, flat and gently downhill sections quicker but don't take any stupid risks on steeper descents.
I will play with my mapping software later to see what I can come up with round here. The climbs won't be a problem but joining then together with different descents and minimising flat roads could be tricky.

I have done a few 100 km rides with 2,500 - 3,000 m of ascent so 25 - 30 metres of ascent per km, but some shorter ones at about 32 m/km. I think that I might _just _be able to find a route to accumulate 1,000 m in 30 km.

Anybody else fancy having a go?


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

And now I'm getting _déjà vu_... have we done this before?


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## cyberknight (5 Dec 2020)

sounds like the usual club run fodder 
3 and a half hours normally for a metric with 3000 feet of climbing, maybe 3 and a quarter if im feeling chipper


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

cyberknight said:


> sounds like the usual club run fodder
> 3 and a half hours normally for a metric with 3000 feet of climbing, maybe 3 and a quarter if im feeling chipper


That's quick but not hilly... The idea is to cram the hills in, not spread them out!


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## Sharky (5 Dec 2020)

As it happens, I did my climbing loop last Sunday. Nowhere near 1000 metres, but we'll over a 1000'.







Took in two climbs that I know have been used for club hill climbs and took me 1:43:22 to cover 18.18 miles, avg 10.55mph.

I could extend it, but would exceed my time limit for my Sunday ride. 

I do like climbing, even at my age and Kent is a lot hillier than you might expect.


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## Dogtrousers (5 Dec 2020)

Not for me I'm afraid.

I tried something similar in the inter-lockdown period but instead of "can't use same road twice" I did "can't climb same hill twice". The former restriction would have been impossible as it would have meant missing out on many hills as they would become inaccessible as I'd used a bit of road needed to get to/from them or I'd already descended them.

I could _possibly_ live with rule #1 but it doesn't grab me. I'm definitely out on rule #2. That's not my kind of thing at all.

I managed 1000m this morning in under 50km but I did use a couple of hills twice and one two and a bit times. I was just making up my route as I went.


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## Venod (5 Dec 2020)

I like the idea, but not the units, I record all my rides in miles and my climbing in feet, I know some people use km and metres, but we are in the UK.


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## itboffin (5 Dec 2020)

Sharky said:


> As it happens, I did my climbing loop last Sunday. Nowhere near 1000 metres, but we'll over a 1000'.
> 
> View attachment 561750
> 
> ...



Yeah I partly grew up in Kent as my nan lived there I remember as a kid when we used to drive down to Rye there were a few hills that the car struggled to get up, now as an adult and cyclist I totally get it, Kent is not flat, unless you ride along the coast then its actually lower than sea level in many parts 

Mind you living in Windshire christ every road out of my village goes up and my house is 550 ft above sea level already, when I first started cycling in 2008 having lived here for a year and thought this is a lovely part of the world i'll get a bike (first bike) to see more of the area.

Its funny because now i still ride these roads and laugh at how hard it was to ride six miles on my BSO and the stupid few commutes i did on it before i realised i needed a proper bike.


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## itboffin (5 Dec 2020)

Dogtrousers said:


> ahem...



Yeah so do i and it has nothing to do with stupid brexit its because i'm of a certain age and last time i checked all UK cars and road signs are in MPH


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## Supersuperleeds (5 Dec 2020)

I think this is a silly idea and I am out.


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

Supersuperleeds said:


> I think this is a silly idea and I am out.




Even as a map reading exercise it is quite challenging... I just tried a couple of candidates round here. There are loads of steep hills but not using the same road twice makes things much more difficult.

Obviously if you had a 1,000 m mountain with 2 roads to the summit then it would be easy just to go up one and down the other. There aren't any of them in the UK!

A steep-sided valley with 8 roads up and down the sides, all climbing/descending 250 metres would be the perfect solution.


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## Sea of vapours (5 Dec 2020)

ColinJ said:


> A steep-sided valley with 8 roads up and down the sides, all climbing/descending 250 metres would be the perfect solution.


I take it your rule about not using the same stretch of road twice means 'irrespective of direction'; so up and back down the same thing is not allowed? If so, that combined with the 'return to start' thing makes this very tricky in either the Dales or the North Pennines. At least, the 30km / 1,000m is. All the loops are too big, so it's actually easier to construct 3,000m in 100km than 1,000m in 33km.


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## Sharky (5 Dec 2020)

itboffin said:


> Yeah I partly grew up in Kent


My loops are on the North Downs. You can zig zag along and be climbing for miles without repeating.


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

Sea of vapours said:


> I take it your rule about not using the same stretch of road twice means 'irrespective of direction'; so up and back down the same thing is not allowed? If so, that combined with the 'return to start' thing makes this very tricky in either the Dales or the North Pennines. At least, the 30km / 1,000m is. All the loops are too big, so it's actually easier to construct 3,000m in 100km than 1,000m in 33km.


You've got it absolutely right. My first thoughts were just about the total ascent, but then I realised that a quick up the Calder Valley going up and down the steep sides a few times would do it but with the restriction I don't think there will be enough climbing.



Sharky said:


> My loops are on the North Downs. You can zig zag along and be climbing for miles without repeating.


That's the kind of thing I meant.

I'll have a look later and see what the Calder Valley does offer.


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## Sea of vapours (5 Dec 2020)

Aha! I have one at 33.2km with 1,075m ascent. I could knock about 1.5km off that and only lose 30m of ascent so that's comfortably in your target climb rate. Doing it quickly would be pretty foolish though, and I certainly won't be.


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## Ajax Bay (5 Dec 2020)

Here's a 38km ride in the soft south, especially for you hard northerners and Kentish folk:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/34792327?beta=false
And here's similar (<36km) on the North Devon coast:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/34792441?beta=false


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## Sea of vapours (5 Dec 2020)

Here's 31.7km with 1003m of ascent. GPX and KML attached.


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## Ming the Merciless (5 Dec 2020)

Here you go. Not the shortest but probably the simplest. From Alston to the Great Dun radar station.


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## Sea of vapours (5 Dec 2020)

That fails on the tricky element of the challenge though: the bit about finishing at the same place it starts !


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## Ming the Merciless (5 Dec 2020)

Sea of vapours said:


> That fails on the tricky element of the challenge though: the bit about finishing at the same place it starts !



Ah but a great ride to do nevertheless


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> Here you go. Not the shortest but probably the simplest. From Alston to the Great Dun radar station.
> 
> View attachment 561774


It does break the rules, but I have it on my list of climbs to do before I die/get too old and knackered to cope!

I just took a quick look at my old 'Trauma of Trawden' loop from Hebden Bridge. Memory Map makes it 1,250 m but it usually exaggerates so I'll call it 1,100 m. That is 45 km though. I'll look for something more compact round here...


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## steverob (5 Dec 2020)

ColinJ said:


> If you prefer imperial units, you could choose 3,000', 3,250', 3,500' or a more accurate equivalent - 3,281'.


As a person who does prefer imperial units (when cycling anyway), I normally go with 3,300 feet as my rough equivalent to 1,000 metres. As it's multiply by three, then add 10%, it's not too hard for me to convert on the fly when I'm out with my semi-regular ride buddy who prefers metric measurements.

I think I could come up with a fairly short route to 1,000 metres in the Chilterns by going up one climb, going along the top of the ridge a bit, coming down the next, along the valley road, up the next climb etc. Trouble is, it's about 10 flat-ish miles for me to reach that first climb (and the same again to come home from the bottom of the last hill), so if I started the loop from home, that would take the climbing per km ratio down massively for me.


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## I like Skol (5 Dec 2020)

1000m or 3000+ft sounds like a typical ride around here for a mere 30 mile ride. The trickiest bit is not crossing your path as linking up the climbs without using some of the same [limited] valley floor routes is difficult. We typically hit 100ft/mile of climbing on our regular rides here, @nickyboy is far more focused on the climbing than I ever am so may be more interested?


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## Sharky (5 Dec 2020)

Dogtrousers said:


> But remember you can only use half the climbs, as you can't use the same road twice.


My route from Longfield. First climb after 2 minutes, up Rabbits Lane, then thru Horton kirby to Eynsford, where left at the memorial and up the climb CC Bexley use for their annual H/C. After lots of climbing, descend to the Pilgrims Way and left. A bit more climbing to reach Terry's Lodge climb and up to West Kingsdown and back to Longfield. No road used twice.

If I have time tomorrow, planning a slight deviation to give me a few more feet of climbing.

As the crow flies, I don't think I was ever more than 10 miles from home.


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## Milkfloat (5 Dec 2020)

I would love to join in but I live at the end of a ‘Close’ so have to use the same road to get in and out. 
Living where I do, I think I would need a minimum of about 40 miles to get to 1000m. I might get the route planner out and look for the lesser climbs and try to stitch them together And bring it below 40 miles.


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

I like Skol said:


> The trickiest bit is not crossing your path as linking up the climbs without using some of the same [limited] valley floor routes is difficult.


Hmm, I hadn't considered crossroads... 

Executive decision - you CAN _cross _a road that you ride elsewhere in your route but you must not ride along the same part of any of it in either direction.



Milkfloat said:


> I would love to join in but I live at the end of a ‘Close’ so have to use the same road to get in and out.


You don't have to start from home. Start and finish at the same point, but that can be anywhere.



steverob said:


> As a person who does prefer imperial units (when cycling anyway), I normally go with 3,300 feet as my rough equivalent to 1,000 metres. As it's multiply by three, then add 10%, it's not too hard for me to convert on the fly when I'm out with my semi-regular ride buddy who prefers metric measurements.


That's a good suggestion - I'll make that the official imperial distance!


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## ColinJ (5 Dec 2020)

Oh, and public roads only. I found myself looking at bridleways to help me out but that was not what I had in mind.


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## nickyboy (5 Dec 2020)

The two best places to do this around here are Chapel en le Frith and Slaithwaite as they both have a lot of steep hills crammed in and plenty of lanes connecting them. I suspect it wouldn't be difficult to get 3500ft at 150ft/mile as a loop which would be about 23 miles. I will take a look when I have some time. Not saying I'm gonna ride it though


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## ColinJ (6 Dec 2020)

I just devised a loop on the hills between Mytholmroyd, Sowerby Bridge, Luddenden Foot, Halifax and Wainstalls.

It is 29.5 km (18.3 miles) and Memory Map claims that it has 1,037 m of ascent but I think it would come out at 900-1,000 m in real life. I'll ride it in the spring and see what my GPS clocks it at. I will probably have to add another couple of km in somewhere to bring it up to the 1,000.

I have ridden nearly all of the climbs and most of them are tough. There are a couple that I have never done before though so it will be interesting to check them out.


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## Ajax Bay (6 Dec 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> probably the simplest. From Alston to the Great Dun radar station.


Simple all right.


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## si_c (6 Dec 2020)

Broadly impossible for me here - the minimum distance for me to get that sort of elevation climb I would put at about 100km. It might be possible sticking within the Wirral area, but is made difficult by the lack of elevation gain throughout and the inability to ride the same road in different directions.

The quickest way would be to head directly into NW and then head up and down around Pentre Halkyn and then come back up the other side of the Wirral - with minimum 30km flat each way to the start of the climbing. @Crackle might have a better idea.


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## nickyboy (6 Dec 2020)

I was right, Chapel en le Frith is a good place for this stupidity

Bike Route Planner - Ride with GPS 

1000m climbing in 21.3 miles. All on normal roads. I suspect you may be able to squeeze a bit our of the distance with a bit of thought. This only took me a few minutes to plot.


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## Tail End Charlie (6 Dec 2020)

I'll have a go at this. I think I could cram that climbing into a 25 mile route near me. I'd have a 5 mile warm up to get to the start though.


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## Julia9054 (6 Dec 2020)

Did a spectacular hilly, twisty - windey route in France this summer which I felt sure would meet the criteria. Disappointed to look back on my Garmin to find it was only 831 metres (48km).
Al is now playing with his map app. He loves route plotting but hates hills. I like hills but am no good at plotting routes!


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## ColinJ (6 Dec 2020)

This is my first attempt... I think it will come up slightly short of climbing and will need tweaking but it will be a nice tough ride to try on a sunny spring day. If I rode to and from Mytholmroyd along the A646 it would be around 50 kms in total, but I would be tempted to ride via Littleborough, Blackstone Edge and Cragg Vale which would add another 350 m of ascent and another 20 kms.


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## I like Skol (6 Dec 2020)

nickyboy said:


> I was right, Chapel en le Frith is a good place for this stupidity
> 
> Bike Route Planner - Ride with GPS
> 
> 1000m climbing in 21.3 miles. All on normal roads. I suspect you may be able to squeeze a bit our of the distance with a bit of thought. This only took me a few minutes to plot.


Guess I know what my ride plans will involve for my next trip out once I finish my current shifts.


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## lazybloke (7 Dec 2020)

No serious climbs in the Surrey Hills but i've found a route that does it in 29.6 miles. 
Might give it a go at some point, but I reckon it's tougher than my knees are used to.


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## ColinJ (7 Dec 2020)

I modified my above route slightly. It adds just under a km but another 45 m of ascent so I would be more likely to hit my target.

I just used Streetview to check the 4 km stretch that I have (somehow!) never got round to riding before - it looks superb. Those roads have been used in the National Hillclimb Championships in the past. Very challenging, and very scenic.

The section that I am talking about is the big wedge shown on the profile between about the 16 km and 20 km points (Luddenden Foot to Luddenden). You wouldn't plan a route in that way if you were not aiming for maximum climbing - you would stay high and proceed round the contour of the hill rather than dropping steeply down and then immediately climbing steeply back up again.


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## Ridgeway (7 Dec 2020)

Here's one i could find locally 950m @ 24.5km although there's definitely better ones around here, just need to look a bit. If we're talking MTB then the distance could be quite a bit shorter, i stuck with road for that little search, i also focused on routes i know and use regularly.

The return descent on the last few KM is a bit strada bianca, but do able on 28mm tyres


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## Ridgeway (7 Dec 2020)

This is one i did a few times in August this Summer when we were camping at Lac du Bourget:






This is Mont du Chat, quite well known.


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## Ming the Merciless (7 Dec 2020)

You can do it in 10 miles, mtn biking up Snowdon. Makes the efforts so far, seem relatively flat.


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## Milkfloat (7 Dec 2020)

If I start off from home, then it is 58 miles to get 3380ft 





The problem is getting to the hills in the first place as it is flat. I had a quick Strava scan and a circular with no crossings ride in the Canaries I did was more than 7800ft for the less distance. I think this challenge is for people local to hills.


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## si_c (7 Dec 2020)

Milkfloat said:


> If I start off from home, then it is 58 miles to get 3380ft
> View attachment 562135
> 
> 
> The problem is getting to the hills in the first place as it is flat. I had a quick Strava scan and a circular with no crossings ride in the Canaries I did was more than 7800ft for the less distance. I think this challenge is for people local to hills.


This is my problem, tried doing a local route last night - gave up after I'd done 70km and had only managed 400m of climbing. Really have to head into Wales to get any elevation gain.


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## cosmicbike (7 Dec 2020)

Not a chance round here, in July I was struggling to get 1000 feet over 20 miles, and that was using the same roads over and over.


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## Sea of vapours (7 Dec 2020)

Dogtrousers said:


> Is there any logic behind the no reuse of roads rule,


Taken to it's logical, at least in a mathematical sense, conclusion: if you allow re-use of roads, especially if you can do the same section in the same direction, then the 'route' would be simply the steepest piece of tarmac you can find, up and back until you reach 1,000m. I have some one in three around here, so I could get 1,000m in 6km. Somewhat pointless (and much prone to falling over at the turnaround too!).

Also, Colin did say that there was no requirement for starting from home, so it's perfectly reasonable to not include the trip to the bottom of the hills.


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## ColinJ (7 Dec 2020)

Dogtrousers said:


> Is there any logic behind the no reuse of roads rule, or is it just an arbitrary "don't step on the cracks" sort of thing to make route planning more of a challenge?


There are already plenty of climbing challenges... Everesting, half-Everesting and so on so I wanted to come up with something a bit different. There wouldn't be much of a challenge for me living here if I could reuse roads because practically every ride I do over 50 kms in length has 1,000+ m of ascent!


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## ColinJ (7 Dec 2020)

I have just realised why I have been thinking along these lines...

I have lost my long-distance mojo in these Covid-19 times, and especially now that we are slipping into winter, so I am trying to make the most of the short rides that I have been doing. I have devised a 5 km loop in Todmorden that has 110 m of ascent in it. I do it on a singlespeed bike so I get my pulse rate well up on the 4 climbs on the loop. It is only a short ride, but I think it is enough to keep my fitness ticking over while I wait for my enthusiasm to return.

It crossed my mind that if I did it 9 times then I would pretty much cram 1,000 m of ascent into 45 km. But I quickly realised that I would go mad after a few laps. Then I started wondering if I could get the climbing in without boring myself (and without spending much time on busy roads) by a careful choice of an intensely hilly route with each road to be ridden once.

I think a 30-something km route with 1,000 m of ascent ridden 'briskly' (say) 3 times a week would work wonders for my fitness.



Dogtrousers said:


> PS. I think you're wrong allowing cross-overs. From an aesthetic point of view this would result in a much more pleasing rule of "circular routes only".


Maybe you are right... Perhaps make the crossroads option, er, optional?


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## lazybloke (7 Dec 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> You can do it in 10 miles, mtn biking up Snowdon. Makes the efforts so far, seem relatively flat.


Roads only!


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## Sharky (7 Dec 2020)

lazybloke said:


> Roads only!


So I guess the train to the top of Snowden is also not allowed?


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## Supersuperleeds (7 Dec 2020)

I've a better challenge, Do less than 3,000 feet over 100 miles.


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## si_c (7 Dec 2020)

Supersuperleeds said:


> I've a better challenge, Do less than 3,000 feet over 100 miles.


Ha! I can do a 100mile ride with probably less than 300ft elevation change.


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## Tribansman (7 Dec 2020)

Supersuperleeds said:


> I've a better challenge, Do less than 3,000 feet over 100 miles.



Reading through this thread, I was going to suggest that!

Although whether this is a challenge depends on where you live. Pretty easy in and around East Anglia, I've done several this year between 2,400 and 2,800.

Maybe here it should be under 2,000 feet. And you can't just ride in Norfolk or the fens!


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## ColinJ (7 Dec 2020)

Tribansman said:


> Reading through this thread, I was going to suggest that!
> 
> Although whether this is a challenge depends on where you live. Pretty easy in and around East Anglia, I've done several this year between 2,400 and 2,800.
> 
> Maybe here it should be under 2,000 feet. And you can't just ride in Norfolk or the fens!


Would you specify a minimum compensatory wind speed?!


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## nickyboy (7 Dec 2020)

Just did a ride in South Devon today. 28 miles, 3800ft climbing. That wasn't really looking for hilliest possible route. Suspect it would be easy to come up with something horrendous like 20 miles/3500 ft down here if you put your mind to it

Actually the ride wasn't too exhausting. All over with in a two hours and a bit, not enough time to get fatigued


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## Julia9054 (7 Dec 2020)

Supersuperleeds said:


> I've a better challenge, Do less than 3,000 feet over 100 miles.


Or last year's cycling holiday in Belgium as it's known. First leg Dunkirque to Ypres don't think I changed gear once!


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## ColinJ (7 Dec 2020)

nickyboy said:


> Just did a ride in South Devon today. 28 miles, 3800ft climbing. That wasn't really looking for hilliest possible route. Suspect it would be easy to come up with something horrendous like 20 miles/3500 ft down here if you put your mind to it


I'm looking forward to doing many such rides - my younger sister has just retired to a big cottage near Exeter.She has said that I can leave a spare bike in her outbuilding which is good news as I intend to visit her at least 4 or 5 times a year and carting a bike back and forth by train every time would be a right pain.

I think I'll check out her local hills on my OS maps and see what I can come up with. I won't be going down until I have had both of my Coronavirus jabs, but it will be fun to plan something nice for the future.


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## Sharky (9 Dec 2020)

This thread has got a lot to answer for. Up to now, I couldn't be bothered with Strava. Just content with recording miles on my garmin and of course keeping a record of my TT's over the last 50 years.
But now to record feet climbed, am now on Strava! 

Haven't the time to get up to 3000' yet, but today's ride... 






Apart from a minute overlap at the start/finish, all roads covered only once in either direction.

Just shows how hilly Kent can be and there lots more hills to climb if I can get out for a longer ride.


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## Ming the Merciless (9 Dec 2020)

Sharky said:


> This thread has got a lot to answer for. Up to now, I couldn't be bothered with Strava. Just content with recording miles on my garmin and of course keeping a record of my TT's over the last 50 years.
> But now to record feet climbed, am now on Strava!
> 
> Haven't the time to get up to 3000' yet, but today's ride...
> ...


Garmin does show height gained


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## Sharky (9 Dec 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> Garmin does show height gained


True, but not quite the same graphical presentation. Was quite impressed by Strava, but the UI is terrible. So over complicated. Took me 10 mins at the end of my first ride to find the save button in the dark.


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## Ming the Merciless (9 Dec 2020)

Sharky said:


> True, but not quite the same graphical presentation. Was quite impressed by Strava, but the UI is terrible. So over complicated. Took me 10 mins at the end of my first ride to find the save button in the dark.



You can setup Garmin Connect to also push your rides to Strava. No need to use Strava app.


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## Sharky (9 Dec 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> You can setup Garmin Connect to also push your rides to Strava. No need to use Strava app.


I did try connect when I first got my garmin, but in the end couldn't be bothered with connecting to the pc after each ride, so got out of the habit.


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## ColinJ (9 Dec 2020)

It's... _SPOOKY_ time! 

I subscribed to Cycling Weekly for 30 years but didn't renew my subscription at the end of the summer. I wasn't reading it as avidly as I used to and couldn't justify the expense. 

They either made a mistake last week or were trying to tempt me back because after a couple of months gap, a copy of CW plopped through the letter box again. I have only just got round to looking at it. I got as far as page 31, featuring an article by Simon Warren...


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## Dogtrousers (10 Dec 2020)

ColinJ said:


> It's... _SPOOKY_ time!
> 
> I subscribed to Cycling Weekly for 30 years but didn't renew my subscription at the end of the summer. I wasn't reading it as avidly as I used to and couldn't justify the expense.
> 
> They either made a mistake last week or were trying to tempt me back because after a couple of months gap, a copy of CW plopped through the letter box again. I have only just got round to looking at it. I got as far as page 31, featuring an article by Simon Warren...


Although similar in intent (do lots of climbing without resorting to repeats) SW's approach is different to yours in that it requires using each _hill_ only once, not each _road_. So you can use a road in both directions, and several times if you're not classing it as a "hill". This enables the use of cunning overlapping loops as in my route below. Unfortunately this breaks his "10 miles from home" rule as the furthest point in the ride was about 20km (~12.5 miles) from my home as the crow flies.


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## I like Skol (10 Dec 2020)

Just realised I created this ride on Thu 3rd, just a couple of days before @ColinJ posed the challenge. Strange coincidence on the required climbing


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## ColinJ (31 Dec 2020)

***** STOP PRESS!!! *****
I was about to rush this through to be in time for the NY but then I realised that there is an enormous safety issue! The nature of this challenge will encourage people to seek out steep little climbs and avoid main roads. I was just thinking of where I want to ride, and then it struck me - these routes could be _VERY _hazardous in poor weather conditions, and therefore not suited to a _monthly _challenge. I don't want somebody who delays a ride until the end of January, waiting for better conditions, to crash on an icy 15% descent because they felt forced out to '_go for it_' on the 31st!

Instead, I will make it a sister challenge to the distance Lunacy Challenge. This will be the _Lunacy Climbing Challenge_.

I am removing the '_no roads twice_' rule. That does mean that minor undulations in repeated roads may repeatedly contribute to the total ascent. Just make sure that significant climbs are at least (say) 80-90% of your total! It felt stupid (for example) that Great Dun Fell would not qualify in a climbing challenge, and there are several lesser examples round here that I want to include***!

I would like to start the challenge threads soon so I need to finalise the details. _Anybody interested_ please give your reactions to my suggestions below. (Yes, I know that _some _of you think it is a silly idea... You can just ignore it and move on!  )

This challenge is intended for riders who can access enough hills to make it reasonably possible. Apologies to those who live in the flatlands. Qualifying rides will be short, sharp shocks! What speed you do them at is up to you. If you want to make the challenge _really _hard, sprint up the climbs. If you prefer an easier life, relax, gear down, and spin!

If you use metric units you must climb 1,000+ metres in less than 40 km. If you prefer imperial units, your target is 3,300+ ft in less than 25 miles. That is a pretty stiff target of 40m/km or 132 ft/mile. It would correspond to climbing 20 km/12.5 miles at an average gradient of 5% (10 km/6.25 miles at 10% and so on) and then the same distance again on the flat or downhill.
The idea is to cram hills into the shortest possible routes without repeating significant climbs _IN THE SAME DIRECTION _on a given ride. You _CAN _repeat stretches of road as long as you don't count any significant climb more than once. So, you _CAN _count dead-end climbs and their descents, but only once per ride. In fact you can ride out, turn round eventually, then come back along the same roads the opposite way as long as your total ascent meets or exceeds the target. You could, for example, ride up and down a valley detouring up and down climbs on the valley sides on the way. (The A646/A6033 will serve me well!)
You don't have to start from home but you _DO _have to return to your starting point. That distance is what counts. How you get to and from the start/finish point is up to you. Cycle there, drive there, catch a train... (whatever). If you wanted to insert a hilly qualifying section in the middle of a ride that you were also using (for example) in the Metric Century A Month Challenge, that would be fine. I am arbitrarily making a limit of one qualifying ride a day so don't bother inventing a stupidly hilly 100 km route with 3 x 1,000+ m hilly sections in it!
Do this at least 13 times in the year. The challenge starts every year on January 1st and finishes on December 31st but don't take any chances with poor weather conditions. Especially important - _*WATCH OUT FOR ICY DESCENTS ON WINTER RIDES! *_If in doubt, postpone your ride and catch up later in the year. Try not to leave your last few rides until late November or December (or whenever _your _winter is) - you may well not get safe, pleasant cycling conditions then!
For your masochistic pleasure (!) you might like try to achieve even tougher climbing ratios on some of your routes. I will be trying to find the shortest route round here which will hit the target.
Decide for yourself how you measure the numbers. It isn't a competition so just pick a reasonably accurate method and stick to it. (Use your GPS, an OS map, Strava... whatever.)
Decide for yourself whether you use the same route more than once in a given year. I reckon I can find 13+ variations round here so I will try 13 unique routes per year, though some of those will repeat routes done in the opposite direction.
If you want to keep a points tally, let's keep it simple - 1 point per qualifying ride. Minimum possible qualifying score 13 points in a year and that is what I will be aiming for. The theoretical maximum is a truly _LUNATIC _365 points (or 366 in a leap year) but don't be silly! 

*** Horsehold Road in Hebden Bridge is a good example. A tough little climb to a hillside hamlet, but the road eventually fizzles out into farm tracks and bridleways.


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## Sharky (1 Jan 2021)

Wise not to encourage serious climbs and descents on back ungritted roads.

Quite like this challenge and will modify some of my loops to take in extra climbing. Will be a gradual process until I hit the target. May not achieve it in Jan, but will work towards it.

I've already bought a 34t to replace my 40t (1*10 transmission).


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## Dogtrousers (1 Jan 2021)

Well you've got rid of the two things I didn't like in the first version: the restriction on using the same road in either direction more than once and the requirement to time rides.

But you've snuck in a new change: instead of "the shortest distance possible" it now has a max of 40km. It's almost as if you're going out of your way to make it geographically exclusive. I think I could probably* do such a route, involving lots of U turns at the tops/bottoms of hills but there will be areas of the country where it is marginal. Why 40km and not 45 ... or 50 ... or "the shortest possible" as you originally had?

* Edit: Yes, I can, just about. 1004m in 39.6km according to RWGPS, including 3 U turns.

Edit(2). This is a useful resource: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/p/United-Kingdom/


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## Sea of vapours (1 Jan 2021)

With the modified rules, I think I may be 'in' for this, though I very much doubt I'll be doing anything before late March or April (as with the Lunacy Challenge). 

40km makes it fairly easy to construct a fair few routes around here, as you know, so I may well try to avoid using precisely the same route twice. This could fit in quite nicely with my intention to do 'shorter routes faster' this year. Hmmm.... then again, doing thirteen different ones will often mean about 50-60km (total), in the bit to/from the start of the loop, so they'll perhaps end up as 'long ride with a really hard bit in the middle' .... ! 

On @Dogtrousers point: I do think a maximum distance is necessary as otherwise the challenge is just 'do a ride which climbs a thousand metres...' (plus other route rules of course), which can simply be 'long ride in rolling country'. 40km seems a good choice as, even here, 30km / 1,000m is moderately hard to find (though less so with the relaxed road re-use rules perhaps).


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## Dogtrousers (1 Jan 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> On @Dogtrousers point: I do think a maximum distance is necessary as otherwise the challenge is just 'do a ride which climbs a thousand metres...' (plus other route rules of course), which can simply be 'long ride in rolling country'. 40km seems a good choice as, even here, 30km / 1,000m is moderately hard to find (though less so with the relaxed road re-use rules perhaps).


I'm not sure I entirely agree, because the previous wording was "as short as possible". The only way this could be a long ride in rolling country would be if all there is is rolling country with absolutely no hills at all. As it stands, a maximum distance serves only to limit the number of people who can enter the challenge.

But the point is moot as I live in the wrong area for this kind of thing so I don't feel particularly strongly.


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## Sea of vapours (1 Jan 2021)

Was it ('as short as possible')? I'd forgotten that. Fair enough then: that is certainly wholly inclusive, whilst not being necessarily 'easy' (tricky in The Netherlands for example). I don't have a strong view either and it's up to Colin, but more participants is better than fewer. Perhaps, like the Lunacy Challenge, people could adapt some of the detailed rules so that the challenge if viable for them, and state that in the thread?


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## ColinJ (1 Jan 2021)

What I originally had in mind was an intensely hilly short ride challenge. Pretty much every ride that I do over 50 kms has 1,000+ metres of ascent*** so 40 kms was chosen to be hillier than normal. There wouldn't be much of an _intensity _challenge in climbing 1,000 m in (say) 100 km.

But I _had _only been thinking in terms of hilly areas...

[Argh - I am fed up of messing about on my phone. I'll save the draft and come back to this on my laptop later...]

I'm back, with a proper keyboard to type on...

Yes, I _should _be more inclusive. Obviously this challenge is no use to someone who is way too far from hill country to get the total in but that doesn't mean excluding those riders in areas with _some _hills!

How about...?

_If you live in a hilly area where achieving 1,000 m (3.300 ft) of ascent in a single ride is commonplace, aim to achieve that total in less than 40 km (25 miles) and without repeating climbs in one ride. As an extra challenge, try to do it in the shortest possible distance.

If finding hills is more of a problem for you, just make the effort to achieve the total ascent and ignore the distance constraint, but try not to repeat climbs.

If you are really short of hills then find as many decent climbs as you can and do any combination of them to get the total in, even if that means doing hill repeats._




*** Unless I am on my singlespeed bike and doing an 'avoid the hills' challenge!


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## Dogtrousers (1 Jan 2021)

Don't sweat it - I was just thinking aloud really. As @Sea of vapours says, it's your challenge. I'm kind of regretting having weighed in in the first place. But seeing that I have started I'll finish. I's say something like _Devise a route that accumulates 1,000m (X feet) of climb without repeating any climb and which is as short as you can make it. As a benchmark 1,000m (X feet) should be achievable in 40km (Y miles) or less in reasonably hilly areas._

If people ignore this and don't punish themselves sufficiently and log rides with only 1% overall ascent when they live in a mountainous area then they're only cheating themselves.


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## ColinJ (2 Jan 2021)

Obviously, I _could _just set myself a private challenge, but if it is going to be a public one then at least it should be achievable and appealing to a reasonable percentage of the cycling public! 

Latest version:

I have devised an annual climbing challenge. It will be a sister challenge to the current distance-based _Annual Lunacy Challenge_, with 13 qualifying rides needed in each calendar year. (I have chosen this format rather than a _monthly _challenge because I don't want to encourage riders to risk descending what might be steep, ungritted, narrow roads in wintry conditions.)

Do 13 rides on public roads in a calendar year, each accumulating 1,000+ metres of ascent. (If you prefer imperial units, your target is 3,300 ft.).

Keep your routes '_challengingly short_'. I live in a hilly area and would normally average about 1,000 metres per 50 km ridden so I will aim to make my qualifying rides shorter than 40 km to make them challenging for me rather than merely routine. Decide for yourself what is challenging for _you _in _your _area.

You must end up back at your starting point each time and you are free to start/finish anywhere. Your hilly loops could be included in longer rides so feel free to insert them into your routes for other challenges.

A specific climb may only be done once per ride, but you can climb to the same point by multiple routes if available.


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## I like Skol (2 Jan 2021)

Think I have accidentally completed my first qualifying ride already on New Year's Day. 3685ft of climbing recorded in just slightly over 51 miles. Considering it was intended to be a flat ride into Cheshire I'm not sure how it happened .
I did pass over Mottram cutting twice, but seeing as how it was not on an out & back route and was approached/exited from differently each time I will allow that.


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## ColinJ (2 Jan 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> Like it. Having made such a nuisance of myself in this thread I suppose I'd better enter it now.


I found your remarks helpful!

I'll start the threads now...


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## ColinJ (2 Jan 2021)

Okay... This thread has now morphed into the chatzone, and I have created the 2021 Annual Lunacy Climbing Challenge thread.

I hope that we get 10+ riders having a go this year. I probably won't do any qualifying rides until late February/early March unless I get back on my bike ASAP and the weather gets better.

I stand a much better chance of completing _this _challenge than the longer ones I have failed recently because I can do suitable qualifying loops in only about 3 hours from home. I often do 1,000+ m on my rides, or fall just short. With this challenge in mind, I won't finish many rides with only 700-800 metres of ascent done, I will add the extra climb needed to get my total up to the target.


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## Sharky (7 Jan 2021)

Logged my first ride today. A long way short of the qualifying criteria. 1147 ft in 15 miles/90mins. I adapted one of my short loops and took every opportunity to descend following a climb so that I could re ascend up the next parallel road. Took me down some roads that I had never bothered with, so made a refreshing change.

But it is a harsh reality that it's going to take me 3 times the time and 3 times the distance at 10mph to achieve a qualifying time. That would make it 45 miles and 4.5 hours. There are a couple of major climbs that I will be including on the extended version of this loop, so will see what that brings.

Even if I don't hit the criteria, really enjoyed today's effort and makes a change from just going round my normal loops.


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## ColinJ (7 Jan 2021)

Sharky said:


> But it is a harsh reality that it's going to take me 3 times the time and 3 times the distance at 10mph to achieve a qualifying time. That would make it 45 miles and 4.5 hours. There are a couple of major climbs that I will be including on the extended version of this loop, so will see what that brings.


I am very slow on hilly routes too, but I can cram steep hills much closer together round here so I reckon I should be able to do my rides in less than 3 hours.


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## Sharky (17 Jan 2021)

This challenge is getting addictive. Did my 2nd ride today. More or less the same route as last time, but took a very tiny detour to take in another hill that I've never ridden up before. Distance extra. 0.57miles and gave me 108ft extra and HR up to 16!

Havent logged it as still a long way to go to meet the full criteria. Up to 1255 ft in 15.09 miles.


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## ColinJ (18 Jan 2021)

I'm still barely riding my bike and pretty unfit. It will take me a few weeks to get back some of the fitness that I have lost. 

I don't want to ride my best bike at this time of year, and 2 of my other bikes are out of action. That only leaves my singlespeed bike and I certainly won't be doing challenging hilly rides on that!

By the time that Spring comes, I should be going back up the local hills.


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## gbs (13 Feb 2021)

I am now past my period of wishing to prove to myself that there is still life in the old legs and hesitate to comment. Nonetheless, how about setting the qualifying requirement for rides of 1500/2000/2500 m vertical gain? Those who like to collect points would say 1/2/3 points according to the vertical gain. Simple and doable for the flat landers of Surrey and Kent and elsewhere. BTW, I applaud the relaxation of the every month rule.


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## ColinJ (13 Feb 2021)

gbs said:


> Nonetheless, how about setting the qualifying requirement for rides of 1500/2000/2500 m vertical gain?


So 1.5x, 2x, and 3x the current qualifying requirement - I'm not sure how that would help flatlanders... 

Assuming that you meant _feet _of ascent... I think it would be odd to reduce the amount of climbing in a climbing challenge so that people with no hills could do it! 

Maybe the relaxation could be that if you genuinely don't have enough hills within a sensible distance of you to do each hill only once, you could opt to do hill repeats but only as necessary. For instance, if you can find a collection of small climbs totalling 500 metres, do that set twice? (Don't forget, you can already do them once in each direction so you only really have to find 500 metres worth, then turn round and come back.)


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## gbs (13 Feb 2021)

Colin, I meant metres to set, for me at least, a real challenge. I haven't absorbed the full detail of yr proposal but I foresee: a) difficulty in complying with no repeat type restrictions in my particular backyard and b) the need to create a detailed planned route - I prefer to have a series of way points and to improvise the routes in between. I find the sort of route that DogT plotted on his trainer admirable for training purposes but it would not appeal in the "real world", lacking in the appeal of a objectives such as a cafe or landmark. I should say that I would rely upon Garmin to give real time vertical gain data and so would add an adhoc hill if deficient in vertical gain and hence could be relatively carefree as to route.


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## ColinJ (13 Feb 2021)

gbs said:


> Colin, I meant metres to set, for me at least, a real challenge. I haven't absorbed the full detail of yr proposal but I foresee: a) difficulty in complying with no repeat type restrictions in my particular backyard and b) the need to create a detailed planned route - I prefer to have a series of way points and to improvise the routes in between. I find the sort of route that DogT plotted on his trainer admirable for training purposes but it would not appeal in the "real world", lacking in the appeal of a objectives such as a cafe or landmark. I should say that I would rely upon Garmin to give real time vertical gain data and so would add an adhoc hill if deficient in vertical gain and hence could be relatively carefree as to route.


Ah, well it wasn't really intended to be a 'maximum elevation gain' challenge. You only have to look at the kind of figures posted by the likes of @Sea of vapours (or even me in one of my better non-Covid years) and you will see that we regularly knock up 2,000+ metres in our longer rides so we would achieve this challenge without even trying.

I was thinking more in terms of very intense shorter rides. Something to aim for perhaps when riding time is a bit more limited.

I have it in my mind to see if I can find a route to get my 1,000 metres in in 30 kms or less. I have already worked out routes that can achieve it in the low-30s but beating 30 km would be pretty difficult.

There is nothing to stop you defining your own targets/rules though. I'm not going to come round and deflate your tyres if your plan is a bit different to mine! Just add a disclaimer - "_I like the idea of a climbing challenge, but have adapted the suggested rules to suit myself!_"


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## gbs (14 Feb 2021)

Colin, Apologies for blundering around yr challenge concept. Enjoy the Spring.


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## Dogtrousers (20 Feb 2021)

I've bagged my first ride. I managed 1,174m in 49km. That's 24 m/km, or 2.4% overall. 

An insanely convoluted route trying to make the best of every road that goes up Sydenham Hill (Crystal Palace) and associated lumps.

Given the constraints of the challenge I doubt that this can be bettered anywhere inside the M25. I actually clocked up 1000m in about 40.5km, but the constraints of starting and finishing in the same place dragged the overall down a bit.


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## ColinJ (20 Feb 2021)

Excellent effort, and suitably mad! 

My fitness is pretty poor at the moment. The illnesses (Covid or otherwise) that I have had over the past 12 months have left me feeling distinctly sub-par. I know that I am not fit, but it has been more than just that - getting out of breath walking up one flight of stairs is not normal even for an unfit me! Still, I am on the mend so I aim to get more riding done over the next month or so of (hopefully) less wintry weather, ready to start tackling the 2 Lunacy challenges.


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## Dogtrousers (20 Feb 2021)

My ride also provided a lesson in why it's important to stick to a single method for estimating elevations. I planned the ride in RWGPS and stuck closely to the route. I uploaded it to RWGPS, and also to Strava to see what it made of it. The results:

RWGPS Route planner: 49.2 km 1,023 m
RWGPS ride upload: 49.0 km 1,174 m (This is my personal "system of record")
Strava ride upload: 49.01 km 1,152 m

So the route planner is quite cautious in estimating ascent. That's not altogether surprising as the elevation data it has will be relatively coarse compared to taking a GPS out and measuring it along the route.

Strava is more stingy in its smoothing. Strava is a bit weird in that I don't think it trusts elevation data in an uploaded file unless it can tell that it comes from a device with a barometric altimeter. I uploaded a tcx file and I don't think that specifies the recording device. It certainly doesn't appear on the ride page.


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## ColinJ (20 Feb 2021)

Planning/measuring is a tricky one... I know that routes plotted with Memory Map (digital OS maps) can come in at about 10-20% or so over what people's GPS devices register, but a GPS device's total ascent figure can also be out. My Garmin sometimes thinks that my front door goes up or down by up to 40-50 metres in the course of one local ride!

I will probably plan for 1,100+ metres and see what the Garmin says on the ride. The question is what to do if MM says something like 1,123 m but the Garmin only reads 964 metres by the end of the loop... 

PS In fact, I will probably plot the profiles and manually calculate the total. A lot of the time the biggest errors come from roads along steep hillsides (a small lateral error makes the software think the route is far down the hillside), passing over high bridges (the software ignores the bridge and looks at the elevation of the terrain below), and so on.

I plotted one route and the elevation profile showed a big dip on a smooth descent. I had done that road hundreds of times so I knew that it was not actually there...






The red line on the profile shows the actual slope of the A58 down towards Littleborough, but you can see that the software thinks that there is a big dip adding a phantom 8 metres of ascent. The red circle on the map surrounds the culprit. It took me years to spot that there is a small valley running under the road with a stream at the bottom. The road is built up on a high culvert but it isn't obvious unless you look for it...

These phantom descents/ascents explain the mapping software exaggerating the total.


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## Dogtrousers (20 Feb 2021)

My experience is that the planner I use (RWGPS) gives a_ lower_ figure. But I don't consider these differences to be due to "errors". It's not wrong, it's just a different method of estimation. Perfectly good and consistent but only to be used to compare with like measurements. It's just necessary to bear in systematic bias with respect to other ways of estimating or you could end up at the end of your loop a few metres short of 1,000.

As far as I'm concerned the figure that RWGPS gives me when I upload the ride is 100% unquestionably right. Simply because that's the one I've decided to use, and for no other reason.

I don't think that manual calculation will give you a quantitatively better figure than any other. Just another method of estimation with its own biases.


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## Sea of vapours (26 Feb 2021)

@ColinJ I'd like to check a route with you before doing it, to ensure that it conforms to the rules (since I certainly don't fancy doing it otherwise! ) More precisely, it certainly conforms to the rules as currently written, so I'm making sure that it's OK by your current _intention. _

The current title does say 'loop', but the rules don't. Whilst I prefer loops, I have a plan for a route which starts at the apex of a 'V', goes to one top point, back to the apex, over to the other top point and then back to the apex again; so it's two out and backs to different points, ascending two hills on each of their four ascent routes. It's between two Dales valleys and will be horrible, at well over 30m/km, so feel free to say 'no' :-)


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## ColinJ (26 Feb 2021)

Feel free - I intend to do similar things if/when I get fit enough to.

I have changed the word '_loop_' to '_section_' in the description of the challenge.

I'm still building up very slowly. I aim to be fit again by the summer when relaxed organised rides might be possible again.


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## Sea of vapours (26 Feb 2021)

Jolly good. I'll look forward to attempting that then. It'll be 'fun'. 

And here's another possibility which will be hugely entertaining: 





That's the Kirkstone Pass, which conveniently has three routes, each of about 350m, up it. 


ColinJ said:


> .. relaxed organised rides might be possible again


I'm not sure that either of these will be either 'relaxed' or 'organised'.


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## ColinJ (26 Feb 2021)

This is one very local one that I have in mind... 1,000 m in 32 km out-and-back. The 4 main climbs are tough to '_very_' tough (the Mytholm Steeps/Church Lane climb back out of Hebden Bridge).






It should be just over 1,000 m but if I think I have come up a few metres short I can easily add another 50-100 m on the hillside opposite Tod park.


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## Dogtrousers (27 Feb 2021)

Another fine morning grinding slowly up the hills of S London. Some spectacular early morning views over the City and in the other direction the mighty Ikea chimneys of Croydon. I didn't stop for photographs because the pictures always look rubbish.





I manged to get my overall ascent over 2.5% (or a Hilliness Ratio over 25) and the 1,000m ticked over at 37.1 km.

Going up Canonbie Rd two runners joined the hill as I rode up. I could hear the footsteps behind me getting louder. I did _*not *_want to be overtaken by a runner so I upped my effort level. I failed, he overtook me and I now have a new max heart rate to enter into various bits of software. Mind you I think I was in better shape than him at the top, he had his hands on his knees and appeared to be about to die, or throw up, or something. I didn't hang around to find out.

Unfortunately I noticed a minor routing infraction. A 100m stretch of Grange Rd gets ridden twice. I thought would be downhill but it actually has an uphill bit and a total ascent of 1m. So I actually "everested" that bit. I consulted the commisaires of my conscience and they let me off with a 200 CHF fine and a warning not to do it again.





Doing this makes me realise the huge challenge of Everesting. I could do this ride twice no problem. Three times - yes ... probably ... but would be no fun. Four? A real challenge, I don't know. 8 times? No chance.


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## ColinJ (27 Feb 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> Doing this makes me realise the huge challenge of Everesting. I could do this ride twice no problem. Three times - yes ... probably ... but would be no fun. Four? A real challenge, I don't know. 8 times? No chance.


In terms of total ascent, yes! 

Once you factor in boredom as well - doing just one climb scores of times... aaaaaargh!


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## Dogtrousers (27 Feb 2021)

ColinJ said:


> In terms of total ascent, yes!
> 
> Once you factor in boredom as well - doing just one climb scores of times... aaaaaargh!


Depends on the length of the climb, of course, but I'm pretty sure exhaustion would get to me well before the boredom did. 

I would, of course, blame the boredom _"I could have gone one, physically I was fine, but I had an unfortunate attack of ennui."_

It's all moot as it's so far outside out of my capability as to be in the realms of fantasy.


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## Dogtrousers (6 Mar 2021)

As expected this is turning into as much of a route planning challenge as a riding challenge. This time I chose a pure out-and back route that doesn't cross or touch itself at all so every hill was both ascended and descended and each bit of road ridden exactly twice - out and back. (Except for a couple of small navigational bloopers where I took parallel routes out and back).

The 1,000m ticked over at just under 40km, but I had some less hilly bits before completing the ride which came out at 2.5% overall, or 40.45 km/ 1,000m.

I'm no sure how well my rides fit in with @ColinJ 's original vision for this challenge but for me it's absolutely ideal for providing me with a way of making rides around the tedious roads of SE London interesting, given the current restrictions (and my interpretation of them)




Hmmm I note that my elevation drifted up a bit during the ride, so I have 8m less descent than ascent, despite finishing and starting at the same place. Still, it is what it is. RWGPS is my gold standard so I can't doubt it.


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## ColinJ (6 Mar 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> As expected this is turning into as much of a route planning challenge as a riding challenge. This time I chose a pure out-and back route that doesn't cross or touch itself at all so every hill was both ascended and descended and each bit of road ridden exactly twice - out and back. (Except for a couple of small navigational bloopers where I took parallel routes out and back).
> 
> The 1,000m ticked over at just under 40km, but I had some less hilly bits before completing the ride which came out at 2.5% overall, or 40.45 km/ 1,000m.
> 
> ...


I think it's great! 

I can see that the hills are a lot smaller than the ones round here but you did tackle an awful lot of them. I'm surprised that they don't add up to more like 1,500 m!

I wanted something to make my shortish rides more interesting so that's where I got the idea of cramming in the hills. 

I wouldn't be interested in doing hill repeats more than a couple of times a year, so that is where the rule preventing repeats comes from. It might be good training to sprint up the same hill over and over but it would do my head in as much as it did my body in!


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## Dogtrousers (6 Mar 2021)

ColinJ said:


> I'm surprised that they don't add up to more like 1,500 m!


It did! It added up to 1666 (Great Fire of London) metres over 67.4 km.

There are only a few really steep ones. Fox Hill has a 20% sign at the bottom (I don't think it's quite true - I think it's a bit less). Canonbie Rd used to have a 17% on the short Northbound section. Oddly, I'm prety sure that's an underestimate. I can barely turn the pedals while standing up on that. And of course a super fit cyclist chose the moment I was grinding up there to zoom effortlessly past me.

My next challenge is to see if I can design a 2,000m no-repeating-hills route with an overall of more than 2.3% or so. Will be tricky but I'll have a go.

Today included a short cobbled climb, Belgian style


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## ColinJ (6 Mar 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> It did! It added up to 1666 (Great Fire of London) metres over 67.4 km.


Oops, I wasn't paying enough attention!

Having said that I wanted to avoid hill repeats, I was just looking at a lumpy local loop for the _other _Lunacy challenge. It starts/finishes 18 km from here and is 12.8 km long so if I rode there and back and did 5 loops it would give me my 100 km. I think it would total near enough 2,000 m of ascent. I might try that ride once and see whether I can cope with the 5 loops. I can imagine the first 3 being bearable but 4 and 5 could be too much for my head once my body started whinging...


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## Sea of vapours (17 Mar 2021)

First one done. That was fair to middling hard work - OK, very hard work in fact! - not least due to having to get there in the first place to do the loop. The altitude profile is less insane than those @Dogtrousers has been enduring, though the climbs are a little larger to compensate. I suspect I'll be doing that again, if I try to actually complete thirteen of these, as I can't find many loops. Getting the ascent in a short enough distance is perfectly viable around here, but there aren't many roads, so ending up back at the start point is the planning challenge. I have four so far, and two of those involve going up a hill or two and back down (allowed, I know, but loops are more pleasing).


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## Dogtrousers (20 Mar 2021)

With lockdown restrictions about to be relaxed I decided to relax my own strict interpretation of the term "local" and do some riding about 25km from home. Ide hill sits on top of the Greensand Ridge, a little bit of high ground next to the North Downs and has plenty of locally famous climbs, and also Yorks Hill which is nationally famous as the home of the Catford CC Hill Climb, which is (or claims to be) the oldest bike race in the world. Or longest-running, I forget the claim. It's stupidly steep.

My last climb was Hogtrough Hill back up onto the North Downs ridge where I started. It's nasty because it's 15-17% right from the start and doesn't let up until you are about half way up. It's one of those climbs that I'm never 100% sure I'll get all the way up, and it still defeats me from time to time. I stopped at the bottom for a breather and saw a cyclist head up the climb. I started a couple of minutes later, grinding very very slowly up. I soon saw her about 50m ahead, walking. I never had to walk, but I never caught her. I don't think I even closed the gap. She was still about 50m ahead when she got to the top of the really steep bit, remounted and zoomed off. She may even have opened the gap a bit as my speed was definitely "any slower and I fall off"


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## ColinJ (20 Mar 2021)

I'm wondering if anybody will finish before I even start! 

I'm planning to bring my best bike out of storage after BST kicks in next weekend. After that I will start tackling more demanding rides than I have wanted to do on my singlespeed bike over the winter.


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## Dogtrousers (27 Mar 2021)

I stumbled across this challenge, which is similar in some ways to this challenge in the route planning requirements. But it's also quite different, having a max of 100km ridden, rather than a min of 1000m climbed.

I might have go at planning a route like this, just for fun. But I know that it won't have the % climbing required for this challenge due to the need to move from one hilly location to another, on relatively flat roads.




For some reason this is hosted on Linkedin, which is rather an obscure location. This made it quite difficult to track down the rules, including resetting the password and blowing the dust off my Linkedin account.

https://www.linkedin.com/events/tulliolockdownchallengewithsimo6774719790280925184/

Simon Warren has set rather a high bar with 3504m in 98.4 km

Edit. I've managed to plan a 99.6km, 2,010m circular ride in my regular riding area. That took some planning. It includes one and a half Simon Warren top 100 climbs. Maybe I'll ride it later in the year.


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## Dogtrousers (2 Apr 2021)

One thing I like about cycling is that it gives you a very physical understanding of the terrain. The North Downs ridge is a typical escarpment, shaped like a door wedge, with one shallow (dip) slope and one steep (scarp) slope. The shallow slope runs down Northwards towards London and the Thames. Being made of chalk, rivers have cut deep valleys into it giving many short sharp climbs. The scarp slope is where the biggest climbs in the area can be found. 

This means that my ride of two halves went first up and down short steep climbs in the valley of the Caterham Bourne river that flows North towards the Thames. Then the second half was down and back up the scarp of the N Downs three times. My legs hurt.


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## Dogtrousers (10 Apr 2021)

Horrible weather today. A biting cold wind on top of the Downs carrying little flecks of water and maybe some hail. 

I did last week's loop in the opposite direction. This brought a new set of climbs into play, including Succomb's Hill which is a double chevron - quite rare inside the M25. Although in terms of numbers this was one of the easiest of my challenge rides, in terms of how it felt it was the hardest. I think that's down to the succession of very steep gradients right at the end. I'm now slumped in front of the telly watching the racing. I may be some time.


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## Sea of vapours (14 Apr 2021)

Another chilly but often sunny day with next to no wind and no wet stuff falling from the sky or on the roads. This route is my best attempt at a Lunacy Climbing level route really close to home. It almost ended about 2km after I started though, since the Langcliffe Scar road, which normally features a tricky, steeply sloping cattle grid at about one third of the way up, currently features a deep, road-width hole instead, since they're replacing the ancient grid with a shiny new one. Fortunately, there's a pedestrian route around the deep hole, though that'll stop anyone getting up there 'quickly' for a while. 

Half an hour later, I thought I'd have to turn back due to a herd of about forty cows walking along the road near Malham Tarn, but fortunately they were being controlled by two dogs and were directed off the road for me to pass. I don't think bikes mix well with large numbers of moving cows as a general rule. 

Today's HR of 27.6 m/km felt much more manageable than the previous of 36, but still rather hard work. It's about time a few more people had a go at this. I'm eagerly anticipating watching @ColinJ 's collection of routes in Calderdale.


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## ColinJ (14 Apr 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> Half an hour later, I thought I'd have to turn back due to a herd of about forty cows walking along the road near Malham Tarn, but fortunately they were being controlled by two dogs and were directed off the road for me to pass. _*I don't think bikes mix well with large numbers of moving cows as a general rule.*_


No - I have said it before - it can only lead to _Udder Chaos_! 








Sea of vapours said:


> Today's HR of 27.6 m/km felt much more manageable than the previous of 36, but still rather hard work. It's about time a few more people had a go at this. *I'm eagerly anticipating watching @ColinJ 's collection of routes in Calderdale.*


Er, so am I! 

I came '_pretty close_' this evening. Well, closer than not going out on my bike at all! 240 metres of ascent in 14 km. Must try harder!


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## Dogtrousers (15 Apr 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> I thought I'd have to turn back due to a herd of about forty cows walking along the road near Malham Tarn, but fortunately they were being controlled by two dogs and were directed off the road for me to pass.


What considerate dogs! 

I'm impressed by your overall ascent values. I'm doing my best to squeeze the last % of climb out of my local landscape but there's only so much you can do.


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## ColinJ (15 Apr 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> Today's HR of 27.6 m/km felt much more manageable than the previous of 36, but still rather hard work. It's about time a few more people had a go at this. I'm eagerly anticipating watching @ColinJ 's collection of routes in Calderdale.


I think that the limit round here will be something like 31-32 m/km, maybe 33. I don't think 36 is possible without shifting the start/finish point away from Calderdale. I'll keep on thinking about it though.

Oh dear... my recent lack of exercise is starting to have unfortunate knock-on effects. I normally balance my warfarin intake, diet, and exercise, to keep my INR** stable. It has been creeping up over the winter because the normal balance has been disturbed. The anticoagulation clinic just rang to say that today's blood test shows me getting towards risky levels so corrective action is needed. They wanted to adjust my warfarin dose but I know from experience that once they do that instability can reign for 4-6 months. I got them to leave it alone for 2 weeks to give me a chance to reduce the INR and restabilise it at a safe level through increased physical activity. The bike and hills beckon! 



** INR = International Normalised Ratio - a standardised measure of blood clotting time


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## Sea of vapours (15 Apr 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> What considerate dogs!
> 
> I'm impressed by your overall ascent values. I'm doing my best to squeeze the last % of climb out of my local landscape but there's only so much you can do.


Ho ho. You may infer that a man on a quad bike was at least present and, I presume, suggesting to the dogs how they might like to handle things with respect to traffic and their herd. About half an hour later, having dropped into Malham and gone up the other of the two roads down into it, the very same cows were massing on the road, fortuantely just beyond the point at which I was due to turn and re-descend. They'd got there via a mere 1.5km amble across level fellside. 

I think that is the trouble with this sort of challenge. It really is down to what's available. Even here those mid thirties HR numbers are rare, in this case since there just aren't enough roads close together to keep the horizontal distance down. I shall have to repeat things to reach thirteen I fear.


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## Sea of vapours (15 Apr 2021)

ColinJ said:


> I think that the limit round here will be something like 31-32 m/km, maybe 33. I don't think 36 is possible without shifting the start/finish point away from Calderdale. I'll keep on thinking about it though.


That's still a pretty high rate. The Audax AAA standard at the short distances is 1,500m for 100km, or an HR of 15, so anything above that is most definitely 'very hilly' I feel. From previous discussions, the Peak District seems to provide perhaps the best options for high HR routes. That said, I'm hopiong to attempt a new highest HR in a few days, weather permitting.

Good luck with applying hills, rather than Warfarin, to INR stabilisation :-) It does sound like the better approach.


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## ColinJ (15 Apr 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> I think that is the trouble with this sort of challenge. It really is down to what's available. Even here those mid thirties HR numbers are rare, in this case since there just aren't enough roads close together to keep the horizontal distance down. I shall have to repeat things to reach thirteen I fear.


I was thinking exactly the same thing on my ride this evening! I think I will be lucky to find more than 2 or 3 qualifying routes from the Calder valley bottom coming in at sub-35 km. It should be much less of a problem to get under my personal limit of 40 km. 



ColinJ said:


> I came '_pretty close_' this evening. Well, closer than not going out on my bike at all! 240 metres of ascent in 14 km. Must try harder!


It was lovely and sunny here this evening so I made _a bit_ more of an effort. This time 480 metres of ascent in 24 km. I know it isn't a huge total but it was the first significant effort that I have been able to make since the end of January when I had an "_unidentified illness_"!!!  I just felt a bit heavy and unfit, rather than very breathless and poorly. I'll ease my way back up to doing 1,000 m in a ride, and then work on doing it in shorter rides.

Now back to my OS maps!


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## ColinJ (16 Apr 2021)

ColinJ said:


> Now back to my OS maps!


OMG - I have devised an horrendously hilly route which is crammed within a 4 km radius of Todmorden town centre... It is not the sort of thing that any sane person would want to do (), and is totally artificial. More obvious routes have too much '_down time_' so on this one I will stop part way down some descents, u-turn, and go back up again. Still, this challenge isn't about '_sensible_' route planning! 

I will have to ride it to check the numbers*** but it is pretty much 1,000 metres of ascent in 23.5 km, a HR of over 42!!! 

I would probably only ever do this precise route once, just for the experience. Normally, I would only do the hills in one direction and would link them up with easier sections for recovery and to allow me to look around at the scenery.







*** I'm not (_totally_) crazy - I will split it into several parts and check them one at a time.


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## ColinJ (16 Apr 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> You have created a monster with this challenge. Beware it may eat you.


Indeed. I am going to have to be careful on this one because my body isn't really keen on steep climbs these days so I'll use my lowest gear and climb very slowly. If I push too hard I can get heart arrhythmia which sometimes continues on and off for a day or two!


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## ColinJ (16 Apr 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> I didn't realise there was any other way to get up hills?


I have seen a few fixed gear superheroes do them in a 72" gear! 



Dogtrousers said:


> Health comes first. I've joined you in the clotty club, but only as a junior member. I had a TIA (lost vision briefly on one eye) and am on blood thinners now. Advice was just to carry on as normal. See what they have to say at my next review.


Oh, bad luck!

Are you on warfarin or one of the *NOACs*?


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## ColinJ (17 Apr 2021)

I have rejigged my earlier crazy route... to make it even more crazy! 

Out and back in 2 directions from Tod Park.






1,000+ metres of ascent in 22.4 km - HR = 44.6. 

I'm probably going to select the other 12 rides to have HRs no higher than 30-32! The route above will probably be one of my last for the challenge, in the autumn. I want to give myself as much time as possible to get fit for it, but do not want to do it in grotty weather late in the year.

My minimum should be HR25. I'll work out a nice local route for that one ASAP and gradually ramp up the ramps for subsequent qualifying rides!


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## Sea of vapours (17 Apr 2021)

I looked at the altitude profile of the first variant of this last night: looks decidedly hard work, though helped, no doubt, by having a start point close to home. If you do either of those you'll beat the best I've yet designed around here, whch is just short of 40. Certainly a very good idea to leave them 'til later in the year I think. Doing either of those from a low base fitness could be ... problematic I'd suggest !


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## Sea of vapours (19 Apr 2021)

Done! Well, my highest HR route is done anyway. I won't be able to improve on that without driving somewhere fairly distant so that pretty much means that, at 39.0 m/km, or a thousand metres in 25.6km, that will be my 'best' Lunacy Climbing ride. I may do it again too as it's somewhat easier than my routes from Askrigg using Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar, despite having a slightly higher HR. Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar have very steep sections on all four sides, whereas this route is each of the three roads up to the Kirkstone Pass and they are, relatively, quite steady gradients apart from a couple of sections on 'The Struggle' up from Ambleside. It was a lovely day too: sunny throughout and consequently definitely in the 'warm' category of days, with minimal wind.

In the graphic the climbs are, in order: south side of pass, The Struggle, north side of pass.


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## Dogtrousers (19 Apr 2021)

Chapeau @Sea of vapours !! That is just crazy. Even if I broke all the routing rules and did reps of my nastiest climbs I'd struggle to match that.

I thought I had some tough planned rides up my sleeve, but all of a sudden they seem a bit tame and gentle.

I'm going to voice an unpopular opinion. Possibly even a troll. On a par with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door: I don't like the term HR. I much prefer to move the decimal point one place to the left and call it overall climb percentage, which is unitless. That has to be the nerdiest, nichest troll ever ... In this thread, at least.


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## Sea of vapours (19 Apr 2021)

Thanks @Dogtrousers . Multiple roads to or from the same place is a handy configuration for this challenge! @ColinJ will beat this ascent rate if he manages to the do the thoroughly nasty route described above though. The great thing about this route is that the views from the Kirkstone Pass are excellent and doing all three roads provides a long view of all of them :-) I'd suggest that all those urban / suburban up and backs are very tough as a result of the relative lack of view!

Is that an unpopular opinion? I'm not sure. I'm not too attached to HR either, especially as it is also an abbreviation for heart rate. That said, I'm not convinced that we especially need a unitless target number do we? And would you wish for 'OCP'?


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## ColinJ (19 Apr 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> Done! Well, my highest HR route is done anyway. I won't be able to improve on that without driving somewhere fairly distant so that pretty much means that, at 39.0 m/km, or a thousand metres in 25.6km, that will be my 'best' Lunacy Climbing ride. I may do it again too as it's somewhat easier than my routes from Askrigg using Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar, despite having a slightly higher HR. Fleak Moss and Oxnop Scar have very steep sections on all four sides, whereas this route is each of the three roads up to the Kirkstone Pass and they are, relatively, quite steady gradients apart from a couple of sections on 'The Struggle' up from Ambleside. It was a lovely day too: sunny throughout and consequently definitely in the 'warm' category of days, with minimal wind.
> 
> In the graphic the climbs are, in order: south side of pass, The Struggle, north side of pass.
> View attachment 584799


I was thinking about something like that when looking at those roads on the '_Name That Road_' thread. Looks great!



Sea of vapours said:


> Multiple roads to or from the same place is a handy configuration for this challenge! @ColinJ will beat this ascent rate if he manages to the do the thoroughly nasty route described above though. The great thing about this route is that the views from the Kirkstone Pass are excellent and doing all three roads provides a long view of all of them :-) I'd suggest that all those urban / suburban up and backs are very tough as a result of the relative lack of view!


TBH, I won't enjoy my route if/when I do it. I especially don't like the idea of turning round round halfway up the climb to Eastwood Road and heading straight back down again once enough elevation gain has been accumulated. I'll do it once for the challenge, but then plan nicer routes where I actually get to go somewhere and enjoy some time looking around. They will be gentler, but can still be pretty tough.



Dogtrousers said:


> I'm going to voice an unpopular opinion. Possibly even a troll. On a par with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door: I don't like the term HR. I much prefer to move the decimal point one place to the left and call it overall climb percentage, which is unitless. That has to be the nerdiest, nichest troll ever ... In this thread, at least.


Funnily enough, I often calculate average gradients for my hillier rides. Yes - it would have made more sense to have stuck to that!


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## Sea of vapours (20 Apr 2021)

ColinJ said:


> TBH, I won't enjoy my route if/when I do it. I especially don't like the idea of turning round round halfway up the climb to Eastwood Road and heading straight back down again once enough elevation gain has been accumulated. I'll do it once for the challenge, but then plan nicer routes where I actually get to go somewhere and enjoy some time looking around. They will be gentler, but can still be pretty tough.


Agreed on that. Whilst trying to find suitable locations for this challenge, I've produced several routes where I decided not to do them as they'd be too irritating; or, more precisely, I decided to forego some climb rate in order to reduce the annoyance. For example, there's one I'll probably do which will go over Buttertubs and up to Tan Hill, then return. Ideally, to reach 1,000m ascent in the shortest distance, I'd turn around about 800m from the Tan Hill Inn as the last bit is almost flat, but that would then be a 100km ride missing out the 'top' of the route: somewhat inelegant I thoiught!


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## Dogtrousers (1 May 2021)

Another route on the North Downs ridge today. Took in a number of locally famous hills: Rowdow Lane (oddly I've never been up there before), Exedown and Old Terry's Lodge, and an old favourite, Vigo Hill.

Pretty much an out and back route, nearly all roads traversed in both directions. First a clockwise loop, then an out and back to Vigo, then the same loop, but anticlockwise.

Interestingly this ride took my total past an Everest. It's taken me 7 fairly tough rides to do this, which puts into perspective what a massive achievement Everesting is.


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## Dogtrousers (15 May 2021)

Another one done. Takes my cumulative total over 10,000m in this challenge.

This time a very simple out-and-back route. No loops, nothing fancy. I started in Westerham, on the A25, rode up on to the Greensand Ridge and zigzagged up and down the steeper southern side.

It's a long time since I rode up Hosey Common Lane. It's steep (10-15%) but what makes it hard is the tarmac is badly broken up and the surface is covered with mud and debris. I recall the last time I rode up it my front wheel somehow tripped over a stick and I fell off. Fortunately no mishaps today.


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## Dogtrousers (3 Jul 2021)

Done another. I planned a short-ish ride to be followed by an afternoon in front of the telly so I set off on an out-and-back convoluted ride up and down the hills of South East London. Unfortunately I had a minor mechanical about three quarters of the way through, which involved a bit of faff, took time, and broke my rhythm so I rode a more direct, less wiggly and thus less hilly route back. I still managed 1,332m in 59.4km - overall 2.25% That's the lowest of my challenge rides so far, but above my personal 2.0% limit so it will do. Without the direct return it would have been more like 2.5%.

Ultimately it may not be my lowest - I've got another planned for the Ashdown Forest. Despite having a few big-ish climbs, it's hard to devise a 1000m route that follows the rules and has an overall percentage of much more than 2.0%


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## ColinJ (4 Jul 2021)

Blimey - that is a complicated route! 

I'm down in Devon at the moment. It would definitely be possible to work out some crazily hilly routes here. The middle section of my recent 106 km ride had nearly 25 m of ascent per km and that was _without_ looking for steep hills!

I'll wait until I get home before starting this challenge. My back and neck (and head!) are very sore and won't recover until I leave this lovely but low-slung cottage. The only way I have stopped walking into low doorframes is by walking around semi-permanently bent over...


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## ColinJ (10 Aug 2021)

Well, I _finally _did one! 

My target is to climb the 1,000+ m in no more than 40 km...

I previously posted this in the wrong Lunacy chat zone...



ColinJ said:


> I have worked out a sane and appealing climbing route. My target was to do my 1,000 m in 40 km or under. This route is actually very close to 40 km, but I may have to add a few hundred metres to get the last few metres of ascent in. I am not going to discount the route though because it is such an obvious one from here - strenuous, scenic, and mainly on quiet roads.


That's the one I did this evening. My mapping software said that that the route had about 1,075 m of ascent but it always tends to inflate the figure. I did some contour counting on my digital OS map and thought it was more like 1,015 m. I kept a small climb in reserve in Todmorden just-in-case and sure enough, I arrived back in town with my GPS showing about 39 km and 988 m of ascent. With the extra climb added, I had managed 1,020 m of ascent in exactly 40 km.

It's a route that I have ridden all of before, but I don't tend to concentrate it down to 40 km. Its a tough little loop, with a very hard first climb which I did from almost a cold start - not a great idea! Next time, I will do a little warm-up loop first.

I am fit enough for this route, but it took it out of me. I think I'll leave any crazy-hard ones for a month or two! I'm sure that I will be doing this one several times a year.


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## Dogtrousers (28 Aug 2021)

Decided to take the challenge further afield with a route round the Ashdown Forest. Although it has some significant climbs, it was hard to devise a route according to the rules that packed in loads of climbing so the result was tough, but statistically mediocre with an HR of 22.7

I decided to get with the gravel trend by including a bit of off-road. Some scary steep downhill on a track made with big loose stones followed by a much less scary long climb on generally hard packed trail.

I sat down under an apple tree to eat my sandwiches after the ride. The subsequent ride to Sevenoaks station was made a bit harder by the presence of 2kg of apples in my rack bag


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## Sea of vapours (28 Aug 2021)

That's considerably less complex than your earlier efforts and with an entirely different type of hazard by the sound of it (loose stones versus assorted urban/suburban car activities). You've reminded me that I must get on with mine now that the non-climbing Lunacy Challenge is done.


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## Dogtrousers (4 Sep 2021)

I went a bit off piste today. I used a route devised for the challenge described in this post

Both challenges require a loop, with any section of road only allowed to be used once in a particular direction. But the CC challenge requires at least 1000m in the shortest distance, whereas the other challenge needs the maximum climb in less than 100k. Unfortunately I made a navigation error so I bust the 100k limit by 1km. It includes two of Simon Warren's top 100 (Toys and Yorks hills). 

The result was a longer ride with a relatively low overall climb of 2.2% 

I probably wouldn't have done this if there were lots of people in this challenge, because I'm breaching the spirit of the challenge, although not not the letter of the challenge rules. But I wanted to ride this route anyway, so I thought why not throw it in.

My super intelligent Garmin wasn't impressed. It told me that I was "overreaching" and that my training status was "unproductive". Well it can fup right off.

Here it is:


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## ColinJ (4 Sep 2021)

Despite it being my idea, I suspect that I won't get close to completing the challenge this year and won't even say that I am doing it in future! 

There is plenty of climbing round here but unless I travel some distance from home I am stuck with a few obvious choices and most of them involve lots of steep stuff crammed in early in the rides before I am properly warmed up. Another way I could do it would be to extend my minimum target distance, but then I would just be doing what I normally do...

I still like the _idea _of this challenge but locally I can't find the kind of interesting variations that @Dogtrousers is coming up with.

I reckon it will have to be renamed _The Annual Dogtrousers Climbing Challenge_ next year!


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## Sea of vapours (4 Sep 2021)

That's a pretty entertaining route :-) Certainly appears to meet the criteria, and I personally like combining multiple objectives in one ride (Thursday's trundle was my monthly AAA audax, the Metric Century and the 32km in the centre was this challenge, so that was pleasing). Dogtrousers' route above looks rather fine both in plan view and in elevation, ticks off two of SW's 100 and also nearly fits his 'most in less than 100km' challenge, so certainly gets my vote. 

I do hope you'll get a /few/ more done though, Colin, particulary your uber high climbing percentage one posted above somewhere.


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## ColinJ (4 Sep 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> I do hope you'll get a /few/ more done though, Colin, particularly your uber high climbing percentage one posted above somewhere.


Yes, I think I should aim for an honourable failure rather than just '*doing a López*' (abandoning in a strop)! 

I want to do that toughie but I worry slightly about the health risks!  (I'm not entirely joking - my heart has the rhythm flutters again tonight and that was after just doing a flat singlespeed ride to Hebden Bridge and back.) On the steepest ramps I'll have to do it at the slowest speed that I can manage without having to put a foot down.


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## Dogtrousers (5 Sep 2021)

ColinJ said:


> Yes, I think I should aim for an honourable failure rather than just '*doing a López*' (abandoning in a strop)!
> 
> I want to do that toughie but I worry slightly about the health risks!  (I'm not entirely joking - my heart has the rhythm flutters again tonight and that was after just doing a flat singlespeed ride to Hebden Bridge and back.) On the steepest ramps I'll have to do it at the slowest speed that I can manage without having to put a foot down.


Take care, but keep at it! You just need to find a balance.

I had to put my foot down on the steepest bit of York's Hill (I think it's ~20% at its steepest. Some people say more, I don't think so). I hit a bit of debris, wobbled sideways and that was it. But I was enormously proud of the fact that I managed to restart.

The mucky, rubbishy back lanes also gave my mudguard QRs a chance to show their paces. Somehow a stick made its way into my spokes and pop! the stays detatched. Fortunately I wasn't going much faster than walking pace at the time.

I saw some pretty stupid cyclist behaviour on some of those tiny lanes (about 1 o'clock of my loop). These are very steep, sunken high sided lanes, often twisty, often debris-strewn, only room for a single vehicle, often with blind entrances and I saw three riders come _flying_ down one of them as I creaked up. Now I don't expect everyone to descend like me - not much faster than I climb - but a bit of caution is needed.

I also saw a quite amusing incident. As I climbed Toy's hill I saw two cyclists approaching behind in my mirror. The first passed me quite quickly, but the second, who I guess was trying to keep up with his faster mate, suddenly popped and transformed from "cyclist approaching from behind" to "cyclist weaving all over the road". I felt quite sorry for him. His mate was waiting at the top and he had the ignomy of being led up the hill by a trundly old git.


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## ColinJ (8 Sep 2021)

Well, I did my second qualifying ride this evening, the same route as my first ride only done in the opposite direction. It is tough both ways, but I think this way is _slightly _harder.

I didn't want to do it in the full heat of the day so I didn't start until after 17:00. The light was lovely until about 19:15 but I was riding too slowly to get round in daylight. I did several of the last few kms on unlit roads. I had taken emergency lights but the front is definitely a '_be seen by_' light NOT a '_see by_' one! It was a mistake. If I'd had a puncture after sunset then I would have been trying to fix it in the dark! And the steep descent into Todmorden in poor light was a bit scary... 

Another time, I would give myself an extra hour. Mind you, that could well be the last day this year when I will worry about feeling too hot when riding so I'll probably just go out at midday instead!


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## Dogtrousers (20 Sep 2021)

I've got some good routes planned, but real life is getting in the way.

In the meantime, this colour coded topographic map looks like a really good resource for route planning. If only you could plot GPX tracks on it.

https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/


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## Sea of vapours (20 Sep 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> In the meantime, this colour coded topographic map looks like a really good resource for route planning.


Hmm..... very nice, though what the England one mostly seems to illustrate is how impressive your routes are to achieve the climb rate in low lying countryside! Then again, my difficulty in route planning for this is the loop aspect. It's fairly easy to get the climb rate high due to all the high things here, but remarkably tricky to end back at the start after the optimal thousand metres ascent due to the sheer size of the climbs and the paucity of roads to choose from. Perhaps the ideal terrain for this is, after all, very crinkly with lots of roads.


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## Dogtrousers (20 Sep 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> Then again, my difficulty in route planning for this is the loop aspect.


What I've learned is: Proper loops are really difficult. Out-and-back is way easier. Or a branching collection of out-and-backs.

I've just been and checked the original thread to verify if out-and-backs are OK, and it's actually not clear on this point. I hope they are, because I've made heavy use of them! Even my proper loops sometimes have small sections where the road is used in both directions - where there's a small sub-loop like a balloon on a string, and the string is used both ways.


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## Sea of vapours (20 Sep 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> I've just been and checked the original thread to verify if out-and-backs are OK


Agreed on the proper loops difficulty. Several of mine are loops .... Hmm..... actually, that's only true for values of 'several' equating to 'two'; and those two are the same one, near enough, in opposite directions. Scratch that then :-)

We definitely did discuss the out and back thing. Colin relented on that one in this post . I knew that since I'd not be doing it at all otherwise  

And to add to that, unless someone is doing a stealth version and not posting here, then only you, Colin and I are doing it, making it rather moot as to the precise interpretation of the rules  As it is, I gave up on my self-imposed rule of not repeating routes ages ago. Also - and I'd forgotten this - Colin was suggesting doing the same route and trying to improve the time: not the best proposal ever, that one 

Oh dear: I was imagining I'd done nine or ten and reviewing the threads has shown me that it's only eight.


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## ColinJ (23 Sep 2021)

I have plotted a route that at least looks interesting...







I thought that the loop around Pendle hill would do it but it was way short so I had to add that extra loop through Blacko with out-and-back to join it on. It was still short, so I then added a silly little detour down to Higham and back up to the nice lane that I wouldn't normally have left. STILL short so I included the out-and-back to/from Padiham Heights at the start and finish. It will be very close... Memory Map reckons 1,152 metres of ascent but it is exaggerating. I think that I can see about 1,030 m and hopefully it will be around 1,050 metres. It is 39.6 km so I don't really have enough spare distance to add much more climbing and keep the distance within my target.

Bonus: I'll ride there and back to get 100 km in for the day and kill 2 Lunatics in 1 day on the bike.  

(Fear not... I will not be riding on the nasty A59 - that section near Clitheroe is mainly on a couple of nearby lanes, and there is a cycle path to join them up. I just have to make it across the road in one piece! )

I had thought of doing the ride in the middle of this week but it has been too windy. I'll check the forecast for Saturday again tomorrow and see if that looks ok for it.


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## Dogtrousers (23 Sep 2021)

Looks good. My point about loops being difficult is borne out by the flat bit at 30 km. This always happens when I'm planning a "nice" hilly loop. I always end up having a flat bit that gets in the way and drags down the overall %.


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## ColinJ (23 Sep 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> Looks good. My point about loops being difficult is borne out by the flat bit at 30 km. This always happens when I'm planning a "nice" hilly loop. I always end up having a flat bit that gets in the way and drags down the overall %.


Yes - that is the unavoidable section alongside the A59.

My first attempt at planning this route was entirely out-and-back, over the Nick of Pendle in each direction, and so on. The thing is, looking at that, I just didn't want to ride it!


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## Sea of vapours (23 Sep 2021)

ColinJ said:


> The thing is, looking at that, I just didn't want to ride it!


Exactly! This is, I think, the inherent problem with this challenge, as we may have discussed on the Bowland ride: routes tend to be unappealing. It's not so much that they are steep, it's that they are often aesthetically unsatisfying; inelegant if you like. Having said that, I do rather like my 'all three ways up to the Kirkstone Inn' route and I do hope to do it again in October when the Lakes has become a little less of a grockle-fest and thus the roads are quieter, if not quiet as such. It's a sort of easier version of doing all three routes up Mont Ventoux continuously and with, I'd argue, better scenery ;-)


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## ColinJ (23 Sep 2021)

Yes!

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

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



*** Unless by some miracle I actually enjoy it, and it doesn't make me fear for my life!


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## Sea of vapours (23 Sep 2021)

Aha! I checked and, using just the two roads to the actual summit of Mont Ventoux (the third splits off too far down to be useful here) the distance required is 26.8km, which is over a kilometre more than the Kirkstone. So Kirkstone is *better* than Ventoux in this respect. Excellent stuff!


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## Dogtrousers (23 Sep 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> It's a sort of easier version of doing all three routes up Mont Ventoux continuously and with, I'd argue, better scenery ;-)


Funny you should mention that. I've got a big birthday coming up year after next and I've decided to go to the continent to ride up some big things. Ventoux sprang to mind immediately but the more I looked into it the less appealing it became. I fear it may be rammed with cyclists, and although it has a kind of brutal beauty it does look a bit ... harsh.

I'm still pondering where to go. The Grand Colombier is a front runner. And they have a special club, the Fêlés du Grand Colombier, like the Cinglés du Mont Ventoux, for multiple ascents in a day - but their bar is lower, only two ascents required. It looks quite nice round there and there should be other stuff to do. Maybe even get to visit CERN.

Then there's logistics - I don't think I'd want to have to take my bike and I fancy hiring a really fancy road bike. I've never ridden a carbon bike in my life. 

Plenty of time to plan ... There's always Kirkstone ...


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## ColinJ (23 Sep 2021)

I have just Street Viewed my Pendle route. I thought that I had ridden all of the roads before but, to my great surprise, I haven't! About 13 km of the 40-odd are new to me. Some of them are singletrack which would be a right pain with traffic, but SV showed hardly any cars on them. Many of the pictures were taken this summer.


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## ColinJ (28 Sep 2021)

ColinJ said:


> Memory Map reckons 1,152 metres of ascent but it is exaggerating. I think that I can see about 1,030 m and hopefully it will be around 1,050 metres. It is 39.6 km so I don't really have enough spare distance to add much more climbing and keep the distance within my target.


I tackled it on Sunday... It turned out that for once MM was about right - my Garmin clocked it at 1,156 m and it certainly didn't feel much less than that! A tough little loop. The HR of 29.5 makes it seem slightly easier than it _actually_ was because about 25% of the loop was easy - the climbing was pretty tough in places.

I could have got away without my little detour through Higham, but it made a change to go that way. 

It is interesting to find little villages like Higham which have now been bypassed by A-roads. Worston, later in the ride, was another example. I reckon it was once on a lane from Downham to Clitheroe but the A59 bypasses it now.


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## Dogtrousers (2 Oct 2021)

12th ride done. Only one to go now. My last two have been a bit disappointing in their low rate of climb (only 2.2%) because I sacrificed climbing for more interesting routes. Today I went back to basics with a route that just crams in the climbs: Out and back to the West, then out and back to the East. Twice I descended hills only to stop at the bottom and go straight back up. That just feels wrong. 

I've been doing routes on the North Downs ridge for a while now and this is, I think, the best I can manage in terms of climb rate while staying within the rules.

I threw in a km or so of unsurfaced road, which was maybe not a good idea after a week of heavy rain. It did give me a few extra precious metres of ascent. And it's Paris-Roubaix this weekend, and that's the nearest I have to cobbles.

I'll be having another attempt at doing "max climbing within 100k" for my 12th ride. I have a route planned based on today's that also nips south and hoovers up the hills around Toys and Ide Hill.


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## ColinJ (2 Oct 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> 12th ride done. Only one to go now.


Well done! 



Dogtrousers said:


> My last two have been a bit disappointing in their low rate of climb (only 2.2%) because I sacrificed climbing for more interesting routes. Today I went back to basics with a route that just crams in the climbs: Out and back to the West, then out and back to the East. Twice I descended hills only to stop at the bottom and go straight back up. *That just feels wrong.*


I have come to the conclusion that unless you happen to live somewhere with an enormous number of possibilities, there is either going to be an awful lot of route repetition, or a lot of artificial 'out-and-back' routes.



Dogtrousers said:


> I'll be having another attempt at doing "max climbing within 100k" for my 12th ride. I have a route planned based on today's that also nips south and hoovers up the hills around Toys and Ide Hill.


I'll be interested to see what you come up with. I imagine that @Sea of vapours will have done 100 km rides with 3,000+ m of ascent? I have done multiple metric century rides with around 2,600 m. The local 'Season of Mists' metric century audax event has more than 2,500 m of ascent and I have ridden that many times.






The climbing challenge would be more interesting if it were 'at least 2,000 m of ascent in at most 100 km of riding' but then we would probably get even fewer entrants!


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## Dogtrousers (2 Oct 2021)

ColinJ said:


> I have come to the conclusion that unless you happen to live somewhere with an enormous number of possibilities, there is either going to be an awful lot of route repetition, or a lot of artificial 'out-and-back' routes.


On one occasion I got off my bike, found somewhere to sit, and had something to eat and sent some text messages. It felt OK heading back up the hill after that. But at my most easterly turnaround there is nowhere to stop, just high hedges, so it was a case of U-turn and back up the hill.



ColinJ said:


> I'll be interested to see what you come up with. I imagine that @Sea of vapours will have done 100 km rides with 3,000+ m of ascent? I have done multiple metric century rides with around 2,600 m. The local 'Season of Mists' metric century audax event has more than 2,500 m of ascent and I have ridden that many times.


Fingers crossed I should manage about 2,500m. 🤞🤞Route includes 3 of Simon Warren's climbs. 

I was going to do it today but there's a yellow warning of wind and rain this afternoon. And the inaugural women's P-R is on telly!


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## ColinJ (2 Oct 2021)

Not that any (either!) of you will be interested, but being observant and curious about such things, I wondered why my lumpy metric century profile shown above came in at about 105km!

I just checked, and the reasons are that...

That shows when the event HQ had been moved from Hebden Bridge down the Calder Valley to Mytholmroyd. That added on much of the flat bits at the start and finish.
The profile shows the correct official route via the Hebden Bridge turning circle. There is a hairpin right turn off the A646 onto the foot of Heptonstall Road which for obvious reasons is illegal. Traffic has to continue towards Todmorden then use the turning circle to come back to the junction at a sensible angle. We naughty cyclists on the event used to take the right turn directly en masse. Drivers usually didn't mind waiting for a couple of minutes to let us all get out of the way.
We were supposed to ride up through Heptonstall on the way out and down again on the way back. The road through the village is narrow, steep and cobbled. It's an interesting challenge climbing it with fresh legs early in the morning when there isn't much traffic. Descending it when tired later on and when tourists are driving towards you is NOT fun, so I used to take the longer road down through Lee Wood, effectively the Heptonstall bypass.
Once those changes are discounted, the hilly core of the ride is about 99.5 km.


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## Sea of vapours (2 Oct 2021)

ColinJ said:


> I imagine that @Sea of vapours will have done 100 km rides with 3,000+ m of ascent?



Nope. I just had a look at what I recall as the hilliest routes I've done over 100km. Plenty in the 2,500m range but not many above that. I think my hilliest is this, which is a little over 3km vertically in just under 120km horizontally, taking in most of the North Pennines passes. The altitude profile is very spiky with very few flat bits and many of the ascents are steep, so I think the 3k/100km is definitely 'going some'! This definitely felt 'quite hard' at the time. (Note the vertical scale since this doesn't look too bad, but it does range from 200m to over 600m.!)


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## Dogtrousers (3 Oct 2021)

ColinJ said:


> Not that any (either!) of you will be interested, but being observant and curious about such things, I wondered why my lumpy metric century profile shown above came in at about 105km! ... the event HQ had been moved ...


This can often be the case with organised rides of a set distance. As we know from hours of route planning it's hard to hit a given distance while including climbs and adding in other practicalities.

[One of] The hardest organised ride[ s] near me is the Hell of the Ashdown sportive, that comes in at 1,900m in 107km. Not terribly impressive stats but they have to wander around a bit to include their feed stations and HQ and also get the big "named" hills in. I've done it a couple of times, and had it cancelled on me due to foul weather twice (it's in Feb). Those little knobbly hills on the in-between bits really take it out of you. It's great fun and really well organised. Unfortunately no sign of a 2022 edition.


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## ColinJ (3 Oct 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> ... they have to wander around a bit to include their feed stations and HQ and also get the big "named" hills in. I've done it a couple of times, and had it cancelled on me due to foul weather twice (it's in Feb). *Those little knobbly hills on the in-between bits really take it out of you*.


Those are the ones I that do me in! 

I can cope with a long steady climb even if it has some steep ramps in it - I just go at my own pace and count down the km (distance) and metres (ascent) remaining. 

Relentless little ups and downs are horrid. I lose track of how many there are, and where they are. The kind of thing that I really hate is grovelling up a 20% ramp, cresting, then seeing a steep descent to a tight bend, a narrow bridge over a stream, and then another damn 20% ramp climbing back out of the valley. Much care needed on the descent, braking almost to a standstill so the second ramp has to be done with no momentum into it. I encountered a lot of that kind of thing in Devon in the summer. For example, this section of a 106 km ride...






I would much rather have done 2 steady climbs totalling the same as those nasty little steep hills!


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## Dogtrousers (9 Oct 2021)

Some days you just haven't got it.

I just bailed after 63km and 1600m of climb in my attempt at "most climbing in 100k". I was knackered and stuck in super slo mo grinding mode on the steeper climbs. My mudguards were all gunged up with mud, and my gear indexing was playing up.

None of these things is a showstopper, but restarting after a rest, and faced with the choice between a long sloggy hill ... and then another and then another or 5km of downhill to the station, I soon found myself at the station.

The historic Catford CC hill climb must be soon. On Yorks Hill there were loads of guys in cycling jerseys sweeping detritus off the road. Yorks is very steep and very narrow. I was struggling to keep moving. I could have done without the audience, who had to pause their sweeping as I passed.


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## Sea of vapours (9 Oct 2021)

Audience embarrassment aside, what a great service! I could do with people sweeping detritus off the steep hills as I approach :-) Sorry to hear about the aborted attempt, but the rationale does sound very compelling, especially the mud aspect :-\


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## ColinJ (9 Oct 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> I could do with people sweeping detritus off the steep hills as I approach :-)


I could have done with that service yesterday. Mind you, the potholes and deep cracks in some of the steepest lanes were more of a problem. A team of hole fillers sent in the day before would have been good!


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## Dogtrousers (11 Oct 2021)

I'm pretty annoyed at having bailed now. I knew I would be.

I've not really got back in to doing longer rides since covid and I think I've forgotten that cycling isn't always fun, and you can ride through the low points. Obsession with this challenge has converted most of my riding into a succession of 10%+ grinds followed by a bit of freewheeling, then another grind. Followed by hours and hours of route planning.

Mind you, my Garmin has a thing called "performance condition" that I generally ignore because I don't understand it. Anyway, it told me that my condition on Saturday started out "a bit crap" and ended up "totally effing rubbish" or something like that. Checking some of the segments I put in some of my slowest ascents. In the case of Yorks Hill it was my slowest ever, despite having personal sweepers clearing the road for me. So maybe it was a bad day too.


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## Dogtrousers (6 Nov 2021)

Challenge complete! 13th ride done.
Final score: *13 rides, 715.7 km 17,376 m 2.4% overall*

Rather than poring over route planners for hours I made today's up as I went along - I'm pretty expert at making these routes now. I included the gentler slope up the N Downs escarpment, which lowered the overall % a bit. I also nipped off for a visit to the café at Ide Hill that bought me very little elevation in a 4 km diversion. Lowered the overall % but worth it for the pastie.

I noticed that the elevation on my GPS drifted up during the ride, which gave me a "free" 60m or so. But I take the view that whatever RWGPS tells me is true, so I'm taking it. The total ride was over 1100m anyway, however you measure it.


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## ColinJ (6 Nov 2021)

Well done!

In your route description in the sister ('_sibling_'? ) thread I read the name of the penultimate climb as _B*st*rd Hill_! 

I am starting to have _very _cold feet (literally!) about inserting my new 32 km lumpy loop into an even lumpier metric century at this time of year. I think I might wimp out, put my overshoes on, and take the flat A646 10 km to and from the loop!


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## Dogtrousers (7 Nov 2021)

ColinJ said:


> In your route description in the sister ('_sibling_'? ) thread I read the name of the penultimate climb as _B*st*rd Hill_!


You're definitely not the first to make that comparison! 

Brasted Hill was the site of the National Hill Climb Championship in 1931. Some great old footage here.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUkLL9Q_v5Y


Oddly enough, although I've seen videos and read articles that rate it as the hardest in the area, there are several hills nearby that I find harder. This may be because I don't race up them.


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## ColinJ (7 Nov 2021)

Yes, a great clip.

How did they race wearing those heavy outfits!


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## Dogtrousers (7 Nov 2021)

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.


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## ColinJ (7 Nov 2021)

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... 



ColinJ said:


> 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!


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## Sea of vapours (19 Nov 2021)

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.) :-)



ColinJ said:


> *I will do* my horribly hard out-and-back local ride just one time, so that...
> 
> I can say that I have done it.
> To remind me to forget about it and to never mention it again***!


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## ColinJ (19 Nov 2021)

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.)



Sea of vapours said:


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


Yes, I have enjoyed that too.



Sea of vapours said:


> 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!


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## Sea of vapours (20 Nov 2021)

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 :-)


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## ColinJ (20 Nov 2021)

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!



Sea of vapours said:


> 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.


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## Sea of vapours (20 Nov 2021)

ColinJ said:


> 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! 



ColinJ said:


> 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). 



ColinJ said:


> 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.


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## Sea of vapours (20 Nov 2021)

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).


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## ColinJ (20 Nov 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> 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! )


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## Dogtrousers (20 Nov 2021)

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.


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## Dogtrousers (30 Dec 2021)

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!


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## ColinJ (30 Dec 2021)

Dogtrousers said:


> 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...


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## Sea of vapours (30 Dec 2021)

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 :-)


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## ColinJ (30 Dec 2021)

Sea of vapours said:


> 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!


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## Dogtrousers (15 Feb 2022)

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.


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## ColinJ (15 Feb 2022)

I think I am going to have to simplify my cycling challenges this year! Maybe something like '_I will try to do at at least 100 km before Bonfire Night_'...

It could called _The Annual Pre-5th November 100 km Total Distance Challenge_. I reckon that I might finish this one - I have already knocked out 72% of the required total and it is only mid-February!


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