Racing the Col d’Eze Hill Climb // Haute Route Alps Stage 7

British Climbing Champion Smashes Col d’Eze Time Trial in this thrilling end to a week of racing at the Haute Route Alpes!

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Ed is an elite cyclist, 2019 British Hill Climb Champion and former Under 23 British RR Champion. He has raced as a Continental level Professional Rider for one of the most successful British cycling teams in Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Azerbaijan to name a few. He is also a public speaker, coach, and founded the on/offline cycling community, Backpedal. At the start of 2021, the Discord community began, and plonked many of Ed’s viewers in to a 550+ strong group of people that had many things in common. Not least wanting to explore the world and pedal their bikes faster!

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7 days, 800 km, and over 20,000 m of climbing. The Hortroot Alps isn’t just a ride. It’s the ultimate test to the most legendary calls of the French Alps. From AgeV all the way to the coast in Nice, every pedal stroke is earned and every summit is a battle. This is where we get to ride like pros to a journey that transforms every rider who dares to take it on. This is my story. Well, we’ve made it to the final stage of the 7-day Hortrrew Alps and we finish in Nice with an uphill time trial or a hill climb if that’s what you want to call it. And as former British Hill Climb champion and now third place on the Saclora leaderboard, I was in my element with this one. I was so motivated for this time trial. And I want to take you through the emotions. I want to take you through the day. I want to take you through the effort and importantly the pacing strategy that I adopted and whether or not that was the reason why I was able to perform as well as I did in this time trial. So let’s take a bit of a step back. The general classification is all but sewn up at this point. If anything, this time trial is more of a procession for me. I’m now sitting second overall. I can’t claw back the seven minutes to first place at this point. And actually, I’m leading my age category, which is really nice, but I really wanted to go out with a bang and I really wanted to win this hill climb or this uphill time trial. The Calder is a 10 kilometer give or take 5% climb. It’s pretty irregular though. It’s a steep first section then it shallows off and then it gradually pulls to the very top. And the tour to France have raced up here numerous times. Parinise too, sometimes from different directions. But Warren Vi has the KM of the side that we did. And as you can see from Straa, I did manage to pull out a pretty good ride, coming in the top 20 out of 20,000 people that have raced up this climb. So, let’s take you through the day. We started in the event village. Now, from there, we actually rode down an official start ramp, but that wasn’t the official start. It’s a bit confusing, but let me take you through it. So, the last few riders would set off 3 minutes apart, but the majority of the other riders would set off 20 to 30 seconds apart along the cycle path and eventually turn left to go into the streets before we take a right onto the actual climb of the cold air. This is where the segment would officially start and then obviously finish at the very top. So when I hit the bottom of the cogs, I was going to be fully committed to the first three and a half kilometers. I was in the big ring. There was nowhere to go. There was a headwind and I was just going to push as hard as I could to get to the first flat section of this climb. Now before the start, I got talking to a couple of riders individually who came up to me looking for a bit of advice on how to pace this climb. what they asked me what I was going to do and I had to preface my answer with a little bit of a caution because my strategy was going to be a positive split meaning I start off hard and I gradually fade off towards the end and for a lot of people they were quite surprised to hear this and I said it’s a very risky move because you really don’t know how much you’re going to be capable of pushing and you don’t want to fade off too much towards the Otherwise, it kind of defeats the point of trying to adopt this pacing strategy. Hence why for 99% of people, the correct pacing strategy is nearly always to ride easier at the start and gradually build your way through it and finish strong at the end. The only problem is with this climb is that the steepest, longest section is the first three and a half to four kilometers. After that, you have a flat section and then it just gradually pulls before you flatten off to the finish. And I was told it was very fast to the top as well. The last maybe kilometer, you’re doing pretty close to 50 km/h. So, if you save anything for that top section, you’ve saved too much and you’re not going to be able to go much faster than if you were to spend more power on the steeper sections further down the climb. Now, through experience, I can say that one of the simplest ways you can find out the best way to pace a climb is to look at someone’s speed graph from doing the climb previously. If you can see obvious places where the speed drops and where the speed increases, well, that gives you a really good idea already as to where you should be distributing your power. The first 3 and 1 half km, I really pushed myself quite hard. I knew I was going to put myself close to, if not over the red line. 370 watts for nearly 9 minutes yielded 1,700 van. That was my climbing speed or 24 km/h. Now, as I was getting to the top of this first section, I caught two riders in front of me who were actually third and fourth in the general classification. I was quite surprised to see them to be honest because they did set off good few minutes before me, but then they might have got caught up in traffic before the actual segment started. So, I didn’t really read too much into it, but it was really good to have some carrots in front of me to chase rather than just an open road. Another reason why this climb suits me is because there was a headwind this first section, and I like to stay seated when I climb as much as possible. And so aerodynamically I’m probably punching a much smaller hole through the wind up this first section of the climb and I’m moving at 24 km an hour. So it does make a difference versus a rider that likes to stand a lot. I noticed that the race leader Fabio throughout the week does like to stand when he climbs and I figured that this might help in the first section of the climb or at least help me getting to the first flat section then and this was about 2 kilometers at about 3% although you definitely pick up quite a bit of speed in the first section where it almost seems like you’re going slightly downhill. I backed off quite a lot here. Um, I didn’t really give myself a power target, but instead I just went off on feel. Uh, and I tried to just let my heart rate and my breathing settle ever so slightly. You don’t really recover in theory here, but you’re just giving yourself, you know, that moment where your brain can like switch off a tiny bit and it it does make a massive difference, especially if you’re going into another section that’s going to be quite hard. You’re more get you’re kind of just getting a little bit of mental recovery more than anything. and and that actually actually plays a big part in this. Now, if any professional if any world tour teams want to get in touch with me like you know Dan Bingham does aerodynamic work and Alex Doset and maybe I can do some hill climb piercing work with with Tali Pikachu. Oh, as if he needs it. Um, so we hit the next portion of the climb which is about 4 kilometers but averages just 4%. Now, this includes the last flat section, but as you can see by the speed towards the end, it really just goes through the roof. And this is what I mean by, you know, saving too much for the finish. Because if you have and you start to really push your power towards the end, you’re not going to be doing much much more speed really for, you know, the amount of effort you’re putting in. uh versus, you know, investing it further down where the gradient’s steeper and you’re on that section of gradient for a lot longer. I feel like I’m a broken record at this point. Those you’ve been following this channel for a while or seen any of my hill climb videos, you’ll know what I’m talking about. As you can see, I’m really starting to fade off at this point. And emotionally, I’m I am actually going into a little bit of a panic because it does feel like I’m dropping off the edge of a cliff. But I do have to have during that moment some trust in that what I’m doing is actually probably the best way to pace this climb based on the headwind, the the steep first section, the shallow middle gradient section. It sounds cliche, but I just had to trust the process. And to be honest, the finish line came up to me really quickly, much quicker than I expected. And I and I crossed the line and I checked the results as soon as possible. And I could see that I’d won the event by almost a whole minute. Now that surprised me quite a lot. Mainly because over the whole week myself and the leader Fabio who was climbing exceptionally all week, we were virtually yeah fairly close on on long climbs. We were about a minute, you know, plus or minus. All the climbs are about 45 minutes to an hour long. And for me to a minute faster on just a 20 minute climb or well maybe slightly less than that when you consider some of it was fairly flat. But then I looked at where I gained all that time using the Strava comparison tool and it becomes obvious that I gained it all in the first four to 5 km. Basically where I just went as hard as I could with the positive split. That’s where I gain the majority of the time. For the rest of the time trial, we’re pretty much even. Although I do start to lose a couple of seconds here or there. So, I was really chuffed to come away and win the hill climb, the uphill time trial. It really made my trip. I’ve got to be honest. It was a great location to finish in Nice. But I have to take my hats off to the event, the organization, you know, the logistics, even the marshals out on the road and, you know, the people driving the event cars and vehicles. They were real really really bang on. I have to I have to give it to them. Um and all the people that rode the event as well. Also a special thanks to Alb Cycles for getting me out of the stuck a couple of times. Um you know the they’re really good friends of mine and you should definitely check them out if you’re looking for a tour for any event next year in Europe. Also, I want to give a special thanks to the riders. Uh, everyone that won, you know, obviously age category awards, uh, but certainly like every single person signed up and attempted and wanted to complete this event. We were saying we were talking during the week about how like not even in pro racing do you have like six or seven consecutive high mountain stages. Usually like even in the criterium dorphan you’d have just the last three days would be high mountains you know usually you have a sprint day in there so it’s like a transition stage like you don’t usually get that much concentrated high intensity as you did at like we did in the hot route and I wanted to give a very special mention as well to my roomie for the week uh Gil was my roomie he was also the lantern rouge for the event so his job is to basically ride around at the back uh with the people who are at the back and look after them through the day. And it was quite funny the contrast because we would get back to the hotel each evening and I’d be sharing stories from the front of the event and he’d be sharing stories from the back of the event. and he would also tell me about this one guy Yan from Germany who you know has has obviously it’s a big deal for him to be at the event um for many reasons which you know I won’t go into on this video but you know it was incredibly awesome for him to be at the event he had a standing ovation um when he collected his award at the end you know for yes being the Lantern Rouge but for not once getting inside the broom wagon, he fought through every single stage and just never gave up. Uh, you know, and Gil told me stories about him, you know, riding at the back and suffering and going through his moments just like we all did, but we all have our moments at different times and for different reasons. Um, and we all do these things for different reasons, you know. Um and and I think it was really really inspiring to see him complete the event and with the courage that he showed as well to complete the event. So um you had to be there uh but massive respect uh and yeah it was awesome to share the week with everybody uh and to meet everybody as well. They came up to me and said that they love the videos, love the channel. That is greatly appreciated uh for all the time and effort I put into it. So, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you watching. I hope you enjoyed and I will see you next time.