Box Hill KOM – Can we beat 1.5 million attempts?
Join me and my team Raptor Factory Racing for a behind the scenes look at our attempt of the official Box Hill Strava segment.
In this video I take you along with me for our recon ride where we prepare for the KOM attempt the following day.
I also analyse the attempt by the team on Strava, comparing it to that of the previous KOM holder Dom Jackson of Foran CT. I also look into each riders power profile and show their overall contribution to achieving this crazy KOM.
Dylan Hicks now has the 👑 up the 2.29km, 5.2% climb – clocking 4:02 at 34.2kph & ~7.5 w/kg
“It’s just a hill, after all. But this meant a lot.”
– Dylan Hicks
About Raptor Factory Racing
We’re here to give elite British riders a real shot:
– A serious national calendar, with results to match
– UCI top 5s and top 10s across Europe
– Continental-level ambitions, built from the ground up
Currently 3rd in the National Series.
Doing what it says on the tin.
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KOM line-up:
Dylan Hicks, Alex Franks, Rowan Baker, Judicaël Clair, Archie Waller, Sam LJ.
Sponsors:
Huge thanks to our sponsors for keeping us fast, focused, and fuelled:
@RaptorBikesCC
@rule28
@styrkruk
@we_are_sungod
@roundwheels
#gbh_exhibition
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🎥 To see the actual film of the KOM attempt check out Calum Brookes’ video here: https://youtu.be/ZNQrD187510
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Sub-4.00 – possible or myth?
Anyone can have a pop
#cycling #cyclingvlog #londoncycling #strava #cycleride #roadcycling #racing #cycleracing #BoxHill #KOMHunting #RaptorFactoryRacing #BritishCycling #StravaKOM
Hello. Hello there. That’s going to be my intro. Welcome back to another video, guys. It’s been a while. Basically, there’s a few reasons for that. Man ended up going and breaking his back, which put a hold on the whole consistency thing, but anyway, I’m back and I’m with a really exciting video for you guys. So, today’s video is going to be about my team wrapped factory racing and their com attempt at Boxhill. Spoiler alert, we got the K. That’s not what the video is going to be about. Video is going to be about all the kind of behind the scenes stuff. Yeah, we’re going to cut to some footage of the day before when we went to wrecking the climb. So, we’re going to cut to that. So, it was a pretty early morning spin to the clubhouse partly to meet up with my teammates for the Boxhill Recon. As you can see, some of us hadn’t had our morning coffees and hence the questionable behavior just then. But regardless, we headed towards Richmond Park on route to Box Hill where the team would put their strategy to the test. Hi, I’m filming you. We just touch. When we got to Boxill, one of the first things that the team had to sort out was how we were going to take the bottom corner. It’s quite a technical corner. It’s slightly off cambered and tight. So, it was important that we practiced this as a team to carry as much speed into the climb as possible. We weren’t really very organized with this initially uh and didn’t have someone on the corner watching the cars come down the hill. And we ended up having a few close calls with this, including Judy. We had to bail into a hedge instead of plowing directly into a car, which unfortunately I didn’t capture. We even decided to give the corner a quick sweep just because there was a lot of loose stuff and gravel. He’s doing a good job. I’m enjoying the view. It was down to Archie to lead the team into the bottom corner. And as you can see, he’s doing a very good job of it. So, I’m now going to show you guys one of the mini practice attempts that we did. I think the team did about four of these in total. But essentially, we were just practicing going full gas into the bottom corner as a team and keeping together as a unit. And then we would basically continue going full gas at com speed right to the top of the first hairpin. So the rider on the back here is the one who will go the whole way and hopefully secure the com. And that’s Dylan Hicks. Very, very punchy guy. So the idea is if we can deliver him as far up the climb as possible, he’ll have the punch at the end to be able to increase the speed even more and then hopefully get the K. So you can’t see him here, but on the front at the minute is Archie who is basically going to do his best one minute power and then once he get up this first part of the climb to the first hair pin, he will be substituted in by Sam who’s just waiting kind of near the car park near the first hair pin. He’s gonna drop in, bring the pace back up again for probably about another minute, and hopefully get the team to the next hair pin where Judy will take over. Uh, then Rowan, then Alex, and then finally Dylan. [Music] and and like you drop in ideally then you go next to him then you come out and then the next person goes into his wheel. Yeah. That’s the way that you should do it. Someone’s got a shout. Obviously Archie will be like on the limit as in like you sort of want to go in front of Archie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Archie comes up beside you. Yeah. Right. After this, the team decided to do a pretty much near full gas effort, and they actually end up getting a time of 413, which is about 8 seconds off the actual com. It wouldn’t be a team ride without someone’s bike breaking, but luckily we had Alex on hand to help fix it. I’ll let you enjoy this moment where Alex was trying to fix Judy’s bike and actually ended up dropping it on the road. Drop your bike. Checking check taking the frame over. Checking the rigidity. How well is the paint on here? Let’s see. But Judy took it pretty well. Over the course of the two days, we had two videographers come down and shoot some content. Amelia and Callum. Shout out to them. They’re basically filming some content for a professional documentary, which is eventually going to be on the Raptor YouTube. It wouldn’t be a British summer training ride unless we did get rained on, but luckily we were pretty close to the clubhouse at this point. The pastries were now in sight and we were back waiting for a nice coffee. Before I headed home, I had to do an interview with Amelia and Callum for the documentary. And then we all headed home to rest up for the big day tomorrow. So, I hope you’re enjoying the video so far, guys. Um, if you are, be sure to leave a like, maybe even consider subscribing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t actually able to make the home attempt on the day just because it was such an early start for me. They had to get there super early because it is a very busy road as you probably know. So, I think they were on the climb by around sort of 6:30 in the morning. But yeah, what I do want to show you though is a little deep dive into each of the riders data. So, interestingly, they did two attempts on the day and the first attempt was a fail. They were I think 4 seconds off the actual com in the first attempt. So it was it was a bit of a kick in the teeth really for the team and they kind of had to dust themselves off 20 minutes later go and do another full gas effort again and there was a little tweak in the strategy which managed to bring them 7 seconds. So that’s what we’re going to look into. So guys, this is going to be a quick sidebyside comparison between our boy Dylan Hicks of Raptoractory Racing and Dom Jackson of Foran CT, the previous com holder of Box Hill. Just for your reference, Dylan is the pink pin and Dom or Foran is the black pin. So as you can see guys, uh we’ve already gained a second on them going into that bottom corner. Probably because we practiced it so much. practice makes perfect. So, that’s awesome. And because we’ve got more speed going into the client, we actually end up gaining about 2 seconds on them pretty much straight away. As you can see though, we do lose this time going into the first hairpin, which is a bit of a shame. And at this point, it’s pretty much even Stevens. As we approach the second hairpin, we actually see the time drop to 2 seconds behind. This could be mainly due to the um weather conditions. they might have had a tailwind on this section of the course. But again, we make the time back on the corner and it’s probably because we just practiced it a bit more and worked out what the max speed was to absolutely nail this corner. So, as we approach the final straight of the climb, you can see it’s pretty much even Stevens. But as we get to sort of the midpoint of the climb and 2/3 into that straight, you can see we’ve actually lost 3 seconds and it’s looking like it’s not going to happen. But somehow on this last third, we can see that the time starts slowly ticking back up. And just as we enter the final hair pin, we are even Stevens. And then what you’re going to see here is actually pretty bloody special because as you can see this last 200 m to the finish line, Dylan goes and he puts 3 seconds into Dom, which is just insane and just shows how fast he is in a hill finish. I think this is a really really awesome thing to see. I’m not going to lie. And that was that. We got the com or yeah, the team got the com or Dylan got the com, however you want to see it. But as you can see, probably could have uh actually have gone even faster um in sections. And I think there are plans to go back and try and get under four, which I think can be easily done. So I thought it would be interesting now to show you guys some power data from each of the individual riders just to show you how they contributed to this K attempt and basically just reveal some of the strategy behind this. So leading the charge we’ve got Archie Waller and Archie is going to do a effort of about 1 minute 8 and he’s going to do his one minute power PB of 720 W and basically this was part of the plan. Basically the team asked Archie to go as hard as he could for this minute because this part of the climb it’s probably out of all the other parts of the climb it’s the best to gain time on. So, part of the strategy was to have Sam waiting here around where this car park is, right next to the first hair pit. And the idea was that Archie would get to the car park, he would peel off, Sam would slot in at the front, and he would do another minute turn to try and get the speed back up. So, yeah, Sam basically does a 1 minute 18 turn at around 446 average, but I’m sure normalized it was like a lot higher. But yeah, this this is enough to get the speed back up for the team. So, just before the second hair pin, Sam peels off and we see Judy take over. So, Judy’s going to do about um another 30 seconds ahead of Sam and just lead them into that second hair pin um and absolutely rail it and hopefully just bring the speed back up smoothly out of that hair pin. And then it’s down to Rowan to take over. So after Judy peels off, Rowan is now on the front at the start of that long straight that we talked about. And Rowan is going to be doing 3 minutes at around 550 W. Um, which is pretty pretty bonkers numbers for me personally. But yeah, so Rowan ends up getting them to around sort of the last 2/3 of the of that long final straight. So, Alex is going to contribute another 30 seconds, and he’s going to get the team to that final hairpin to deliver Dylan, who’s going to have to put a hell of an effort in to secure the com. Alex ends up averaging around 480 W for about 3 minutes 39 of the effort. And then it’s up to Dylan to deliver in that last sort of 150 m. And deliver he does. And as you can see, he ends up averaging around 707 W for the last 11 seconds of the finish line, which is just like insane. Like to have that turn of speed at sort of that point in the climb is is amazing. And I think Dylan actually ends up averaging 7.56 watts per kilo for 4 minutes and 2 seconds, which is just like insane numbers. Hopefully I didn’t bog you down too much in the data, but it just goes to show the kind of power that goes into gaining this com and how impressive it is. But yeah, hope you enjoy the video, guys. There’s going to be a lot more consistency now um because I’m actually riding my bike a bit more and I’m going to be doing a lot of kind of group rides and things like that. So, kind of want to take you along with me with that. Yeah, with that, see you in the next video. Ciao.