The UK hill climb season is defined by bikes and tech pushed to the limit of lightness.
The 2023 UK Hill Climb National Championships had no shortage of boutique lightweight tech, weight-saving hacks and sanded carbon on show. Listen to @ABRcycleclub rider Ben being interviewed after completing the National Hill Climb championship 2023. “the Struggle” climb is a 15 minute tough effort for any cyclist, hear the thoughts of Ben and the £1.5k Trek Emonda SLR he rode the course on
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Hill climbers will be dreaming of gang to eat P like this I’m here with Ben mckinson from Apache Brave racing and my goodness has he got a lightweight amonda Ben very briefly how awful was that ah it was a struggle uh yeah the very very hard work uh I rode
It Friday on Saturday but but yeah you just can’t prepare um feeling it now but it’s all good fun so that’s why we’re here now this is obviously a pretty special looking bike what is your personal Tech highlight from this bike I think it’s got to be the sanded frame
You know I uh went into the the the lockdown and needed a little project so I thought why not buy a 200 eBay track them on the frame and S the paint off Got 5 hours in and realized i’ made a massive mistake and yeah 30 hours later
It was was done so saved me 175 G so well worth it um but yeah I think that’s I think that’s my highlight so you saying you spend £200 in the frame and you’re like you know this is a nice build but it’s not it’s not crazy crazy
What do you think this owes you as a bike so including the wheels and I bought these the other week for500 quid is £1,500 it’s it’s all secondhand all like eBay Facebook Marketplace whatever it is absolutely love that you know again we saw this last year you do not
Have to spend ludicrous amounts of money to be competitive in a hill climb doesn’t matter how you place though what people want to know how much does your bike weigh it’s 5.2 kilos nice not bad for the cash how did it feel on today’s climb started off really well um but
Then I I ran into a mechanical relatively early on when I was putting any power through the 28 it was just skipping and like on some of the slopes on this of 26 just isn’t going to cut it so I was like I’m just going to have to
Deal with this slip um yeah no ideal but I mean I’m here you know I didn’t fall off on your cockpit I can see well there’s no expander buang in there or top cap and you’ve gone for the chopped drops what’s the rale behind that
Wait so the uh the expander cap uh when I was obviously building the bike I had to take it out anyway and I remember taking it out and thinking wow that’s heavy you know I know it’s not smart final point for me swam red mechanical I
Mean that is that is the hill climbers group set of choice the rear derailer saves a lot over say J race and then I use one by as well so I’ve stripped the uh the shifter and taken the selector out of that but yeah say when I was
Reading up on it sham red was the way to go so that’s that’s this is where I ended up and I got it cheap well thank you so much such a cool bike I definitely sa of the bikes on the hill and mondas and canondale super
Sixes are clearly the bikes to go for if you want to build something lightweight
1 Comment
Great interview. Well done Ben 👌