Re-Upload: Burway Hill Climb – Savage and Stunning In Equal Measure

This time, with the sound actually added! Sorry I am a cretin, and thanks Marco for telling me I’d missed this.

Last weekend’s hill climb was in the Shropshire hills, a bit of Britain I have majorly under explored. i was blown away by the beauty of the landscape and how great the road was for cycling. My favourite race of the year.

Credit for picture in thumbnail: Meg Higginson

Race: https://www.strava.com/activities/15961078913
Segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/29703351

0:00 – Waffly On Bike Intro
1:20 – Pre Race Footage
2:50 – Race Footage
9:30 – Other Competitors and Outro

This is a bit of a gamble. It’s a bit steep for me to be seated filming. This is Burway. What a beautiful, beautiful bit of the world. I am regretting hill climb bike. My cadence is currently 35. All right. Yeah, it’s all right. This it is all right. I am worried about my gearing. My effort will just be whatever my effort is. But uh drop historically part of Wales. Looks like it, doesn’t it? You’re right. There’s about 60 people at this event. Should be great. closed road, which is awesome. Early start, so I had to get up at 6 to get here, but hey ho. So, I have an early apology to make. My front camera I did turn on. Um, it just didn’t actually switch it on. It’s to do with the way the casing activates. I just didn’t check because I was in a rush. So, you’re getting a rear view of the descent of this hill. So, you’ve seen it sort of in the way I would see it racing up. But, I am absolutely gutted because this is this is my favorite climb that I’ve done this season as I hope will come across. I wish you could have seen what I saw as I raced up it because yeah, it’s um it’s fantastic. Maybe I mean, tell me in the comments if you think I’m massively overegging this, but for me, this is um everything that I like in in a hill climb. Here’s Rian. I’m pinning my number on. I thought I’d give you a little behind the scenes there. And back down to the bottom. It was absolutely freezing though. I think it was seven or eight degrees. So, in my skin suit only, cuz I didn’t want to leave stuff at the bottom, I just shivered down this descent. Um, I could plan better for these things, I think. But, uh, it’s part of the fun, isn’t it, to just rock up and kind of figure it out as I go. If I planned better, I reckon there’s a chance I would be a little bit faster up the hills. But when I say a little bit faster, I mean a second or two at most. So, here’s the stats of Burway. It’s relatively short at just under a mile, 1.38 km, but it’s 12 a.5%. And that’s not the full story either. Never is, is it? Steepest right at the beginning. So, getting going is really hard. Huge, huge shout out to the marshall who held the bike up. Did you see the army gave me? He did this for everyone equally, but it’s the biggest push off I’ve ever had up a hill just to get people going. So, fair play, mate. Thank you very much for that. As I alluded to, I was pretty concerned about my gearing at the beginning. Uh, cattle grid there and they’d laid a lovely crossing for us so that we didn’t have to chew up our wheels as we went over. Very kind. I’d clocked in my head this gate that I’ve just gone through and I thought I can basically do whatever I want out the saddle stomp and feel like I’m getting going until there. And from there I have to be cautious with the power. I didn’t want a repeat of bushkum where I just overdid it and then I felt pathetic. So I thought I’d try this pacing malarkey. As you can see my power has just dropped out. I don’t know what impact having small power dropouts like that has on the average power. And I do wonder if I didn’t have them, would I have been, I don’t know, five watts higher on my average? If I had, I’d have been delighted because that would have been an alltime power PB. Who knows? Um, you can see that I’ve reigned it in quite significantly here. 16 17%. There’s only so far you can rein it in just to keep turning the pedals. Look at my cadence. 60 RPM. Um, I started in my easiest gear and I’ve stayed in my easiest gear. This is the only gear I’ve got. I can only modulate power to change my cadence at this point. Or modulate cadence to change power if you want to view it that way. That was a very boring thing to say, wasn’t it? Look at church threatened down behind me. What a nice view. Lovely little town. Um, it was great how many people came out and this being a closed road event really gave it a different feel. Um, you don’t get too many of them. I know I did Bushkum. Uh, I don’t want to give you the illusion that most British hill climbs are closed road. I would say most are open road. And as I came up here just around this corner, my minute man was fast approaching, as in I was fast approaching my minute man. And I think I’ve said before, I’ve I’ve made the mistake of going too hard to pass a minute man in the past. So, I thought I’m just going to keep doing exactly what I’m doing. As I got alongside him, he kicked a little bit and we had this awkward moment of just riding side by side and I thought, I’m not going to kick though, you know. I’ll just ride here. It’s closed road. Rian got this great set of photos of me making the pass, which was really uh nice. And then I thought I’d just show you the rest that she had. And it’s a little teaser/spoiler that she tried to get me catching my twominute man up ahead. Unfortunately, we all just blend in to the scenery, but so be it. So, here I am passing Rian. You’ll see her somewhere. I haven’t spotted her yet. Let me know in the comments if I missed her. What What went on there? Anyway, yeah, up and round this corner. I thought that’s the steep bit done, right? I mean, it’s all steep. There is no not steep on this apart from the downhill, but that’s the steepest part done. And later on, me and Rian were discussing watching the other races and seeing what their sort of strategy was. A lot of people went really hard, but a few really good people power drop out again, by the way. God damn it. Few really good people looked quite fast, but they looked faster on this section. And Rihanna said that I looked faster on this section. like I sped up later on which was really reassuring. I’m looking at me doing 12 kilometers an hour now and I’m doubting that somewhat but if that’s what the perception was then that’s excellent. So it was somewhere around here that I decided I can now just start really stomping again. I want to see 400 watts for most of this bit because I know that there is a a rolling off and a downhill. Here I am catching my two-minute man. As you can see, I mean, that’s that’s slacking, isn’t it? I’m doing 300 watts to to pass there, which isn’t good enough, but I’m saving something so that I can fully kick on the really steep bits. I don’t know if I come across as obnoxious when I talk about catching people and stuff like these these guys are just out doing their own race. And this is one of those hills that it’s a genuine achievement just to get up and everyone who comes and races gets a time. So, I hope I never sound sort of dismissive or discouraging of people I pass. And if people passed me, I think I’d be just impressed and and happy for them. I think it works both ways. But yeah, do let me know if I come across as a knob. I think this is roughly where the uh the thumbnail for this video was taken. I think that’s the photographer there. I thought it was a really nice picture. I wanted to push down this descent and push back up, but I haven’t mentally got that in me just yet. I hope I will eventually get that. I’m quite happy that it was really only a very brief dip and we’re back up to acceptable race pace. Now, as you come over here, the view forwards is actually quite disappointing. So, I’m not disappointed that you’ve only got rear footage for this bit. The view down over the Shropshire Hills is awesome. And the morning light made them all look um really impressive with the with the shadows and the cold air. There’s something about it. It just looks different, doesn’t it? Looks fantastic. Apologies that this video is so late coming out, by the way. It’s been a busy week. Went to watch Everton on uh on Monday, did a ZRL on Tuesday. It’s a hard life being me, so I’ve only just got round to this. I was very lucky with the weather. For all it was cold, this sun was glorious. And here we go. Kick now. I’m so happy with the fact that I managed a 500 watt kick for Okay, not for very long. But I actually put some power at the end. And here you go. 394 watts for six and a bit minutes. Got me eighth. Oh, ninth place. Sorry, don’t claim eighth, Nick. And see Ed there. Such a strong ride from him this week. So nice to see my mate doing well. Just going to leave you with a bit of footage of the other competitors now. Okay. Yeah, I don’t know if you like this stuff or not, but I think it’s interesting to see the race from another perspective. So, I’m just going to leave it at that. I’ve got two races coming up this weekend. I will make a video of them. Doing well, mate. Looking strong. Hope you’ve enjoyed my bur video, guys. Thank you very much for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one. doing well. Keep pushing. [Music] Doing well. Let’s go. Up, up, up, up. Oh, nice shoes. Oh, they are. We like your shoes. And again, three minutes left. Okay. Whoever this is, they’re flying. Very fast. Let’s go. Up, up, up, up. [Music] which is for me is a bad sign, but maybe that’s how people ride. Up up up. Let’s go. Nice and strong. Up, up, up. [Music] Go on, Ed. Looking good, mate. [Music] Go on, Ed. Let’s go. Let’s go. [Music] 235. 235. He’s saving something. Okay. Okay. Sorry. It’s James Stor then Dave Fellow. So, I can’t quite believe that I’ve never ridden my bike here before. It’s too far to cycle from my house, but it’s only like an hour and a half drive, and it’s absolutely beautiful. I know I’m very lucky with the weather. This is just the perfect day for a hill climb. Maybe the perfect road for a hill climb. Oh, I just can’t believe it. I’m happy with my effort without being like overwhelmed. I did 390 watts for 6 minutes, which is decent. Happy enough with that. Mostly I’m just happy to be out on my bike on a day like this in a place like this. Now I need to stop faffing. I can’t cycle any more than I have cuz we’re off to Shrewsbury for lunch. I just need to go down to the uh to the clubhouse first. But I just wanted to get an outro say look how amazing it is. Don’t you feel like that view looks like a proper mountainous country? Not 100 m hills.