Iona at Peterborough Crit

Iona at Peterborough Crit

Sunday 3 November 2013

Hill Climb Season, by Karen

After our 'normal' racing season is over, September and October sees a slightly demented and peculiar style of racing - the Hill Climb.  Given that I love climbing hills on and off my bike, I thought  that I would give a few hill climbs a bash this year.  The only Hill Climb I had done previously was European style mass start race which suited my racing personality.  Doing a solo time trial effort up a hill would prove to be very different.
My first race was a 5 minute effort up Leith Hill.  It was only a few days after returning from Italy, so the first challenge was to put my bike back together very quickly.  Local enough to home to cycle out as a warm up, and off I went.  I had cycled the hill a couple of times previously, so thought I knew what to expect.  At the same time, I knew I was up against the challenge of racing hill climbing pocket rocket Maryka Sennema.  All the girls started close to each other, so we all saw each other warming up.  General advice seemed to be 'don't set off too fast', as the hill has two steep parts, with an easier section in the middle.  On starting, I didn't seem to follow this advice, and powered up the first section.  Amazingly, I started to see my 1 minute girl on the road ahead of me, which gave me motivation to chase harder.  I thought I was going very well, so think that I eased back on the effort for the last couple of hundred metres, which may have cost me 2nd place.  I heard Maryka storming up behind me which wasn't a big surprise, but a little disappointing that she could beat me by quite that much over such a short distance.  That was my first lesson in how hill climbing is about knowing the hill in advance.

The main goal was the National Hill Climb Championships, which was on my other local roads, back up in North Yorkshire, on 27th October.  I didn't get to test ride the hill on my first visit as I had picked up a very unusual condition called 'Trigger Finger' that kept me off the bike for a couple of weeks immediately after Leith Hill.  So, I was relying on a reccie by car in advance, followed by two test rides the day before the event.  The weekend came round, and it was billed to be 'the storm of the century' in the south.  The forecast wasn't so bad for Yorkshire, and promised a strong tailwind.  I didn't notice this for the test rides on Saturday, at least not until I turned round to come back down again.  Sunday however was worse weather, which meant the tailwind was stronger and times would be very fast.  19 girls were on the start list including myself, previous GB Cycles guest Nicola Soden, Maryka and defending champion Lynn Hamel.  The rain came and went during the morning, but I managed to stay dry during my warm up.  With one non starter, I was only the 4th starter of the entire competition, chasing the only vet lady and Maryka up the hill.  The hill was another two part hill, with a downhill section in the middle to recover in.  I went hard out of the start again, and felt that I was spinning very well up the first steep section.  I soon got my 1 minute girl in sight and overtook her before the cattle grid.  I knew that one of the keys to a good time on this hill would be to continue to push through the downhill section, so I did that.  Then onto the last section, and retrospectively I think I eased off again, and again it proved to be costly in seconds and places.  Proving her hill climbing quality, Maryka took the title away from Lynn, with newcomer Angela Hibbs (Tyneside Vagabonds) in 3rd.  4th - 9th places were separated by 25 seconds, and I was at the wrong end of that 25 seconds, finishing 9th.  With more experience, there should be more to come if I do hill climbing again in 2014.