A bit of a delay

Tonight was supposed to be the first report on the hills I have climbed. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite feeling up to it, so I have another week to build up those nerves.

And nerves they are. I had a bit of a "restless night" after foolishly looking up Blake Street on Google Maps. It looks unbelievably steep, and much longer than I had imagined. I suspect that lack of sleep may not have helped me feel right for this morning!!

Do you see what I mean?! Note those railings on the left to help people walking up!!

Anyway, since there will be a bit of a wait for any actual hill action - I thought you might like a map. My in-laws will certainly enjoy it; the whole family loves a good map. This one is of the hills that I plan to climb (they are listed on the right in the order of difficulty as suggested by my spreadsheet), and it is a great map in that it makes the whole planning process a bit easier.

What the map makes clear is that the hills appear to be arranged in groups:

   - Group 1 is around Rivelin Valley and includes Hagg Hill

   - Group 2 is Walkley (including Blake Street)

   - Group 3 is NE of the city and includes Jenkin Road

   - Group 4 is Broomhill area, including the second hardest hill on my calculations, Highcliffe Road

   - Group 5 is the Heeley area with Myrtle Road as the feature road

   - Group 6 is Woodseats/Bradway and is my local area - this also includes Cobnar Road which has the highest maximum gradient on the list at 30%.

Since I cannot imagine being able to do all of these in one trip, but hope that I can manage a few each time, this map has pretty much set my initial plan. Six groups, six weekends.

The plan is fluid, as I have no idea if I can get up more than one of these in any single trip. Six would be great, but if it takes 26 weekends, then so be it!

I have also decided on how I will measure and assess the climbs.

• Toughest: I have bought a Heart Rate Monitor, and will record the average heart rate for each climb. The hill with the highest average will be the hardest hill to climb.
• Steepest: I will also record the average speed, and the hill with the slowest average speed will be the steepest.

Birth of a challenge

The challenge came about because I was looking for a different route home. I was getting up my hill about 70% of the time, and getting bored of it.

There is an alternative. I’ve walked it quite a few times, as it is a shortcut to and from our nearest supermarket. It is much shorter, as it goes straight up the hill. In fact, the first part is a (steep) footpath then steps through a wood, so you can only actually cycle the top section. This starts with a short, sharp 90m climb on a road called Prospect Place, then eases off before going steep again this time on Prospect Road. OK, so it is quite a bit steeper, in fact so steep that there are handrails to help you when you are walking up, but short and steep felt more suited to my physique. I am big, so have more power than stamina. Altogether, just 260m of (admittedly hard) effort. This should work, right?

This is that first section, courtesy of Google Maps. It really is steep!

My plan was instead of dropping into a really low gear on that first section and spinning the pedals to crawl up at walking pace, I would put it into a middle gear and stand up on the pedals. Then I could use the easier middle section to get my breath back, then up on the pedals again for the final steep bit. I would be like Marco Pantani ("the Pirate") on Alpe d’Huez.

It is safe to say that the plan didn’t work.

I pushed the bike to the bottom of Prospect Place. I was in the middle gear on the lowest ring. After a few minutes to compose myself, I set off.  The first 30 metres were easy, I was feeling good. The next 20 were harder, the next 20 harder still and I began to struggle. The next 10 went by very slowly, and then it happened.

My chain snapped.

I couldn’t even pretend that I might have made it. I had to stop for five whole minutes holding my broken chain before my heart stopped thudding against my ribs. And I mean it was THUMPING. I genuinely thought I was going to be sick right there at the side of the road.

I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Still, it was nagging at me. Was it because I was in the wrong gear? Is it just that bikes aren’t designed to have 20 stone lumps exerting that much force into it? Like before when I realised that the bike was the problem, not me, I began to convince myself that this time it was the hill that was the problem. Clearly, it was too steep. I mean, it is probably the steepest hill in the whole of Sheffield, isn't it? Almost certainly.

As ever these days, when a question like this nags away at you, there is only one thing you can do. Google.

A bit of internet searching later, and what do I find? A forum discussion that has been going since 2003 about what the steepest hill in Sheffield is. Reading through, what you quickly realise is that (a) Sheffield has a lot of very steep hills, each with their own disciples claiming it to be the steepest, and (b) Sheffield’s citizens are a very funny bunch. There is apparently almost no hill in Sheffield that someone hasn’t gone up on a BMX while smoking a fag, or that they haven’t heard of being ridden by a one-legged Chinese man. Several hills had recurring mentions, including my very own Prospect Place. There were several people who had walked or cycled some of the hills, but no-one had tried them all. The really steep ones would be dismissed because they were too short, but equally the long ones would be disregarded because the steep bit was only a small part of it, so the rest was relatively easy.

Over the years that the forum has run, lots of roads have been suggested but there is almost no agreement as to which is the steepest. The big three contenders seemed to encapsulate this:

·      Blake Street. This is recognised as the steepest hill in Sheffield. Mainly because the actual Sheffield they mean here is really ‘old Sheffield’ which is what used to be Sheffield at some unspecified time in the past when parts of what is now Sheffield were villages on the outskirts. [As an incomer, I don’t really understand this at all!]

·      Jenkin Road. This is very popular because of three factors. Firstly, it is very long (over a kilometre). Secondly, it has a section reputed to hit over 25% gradient. Thirdly, it was a feature of the 2014 Tour de France where the eventual winner, Nibali, launched an attack up Jenkin Road and rode into the yellow jersey for the first time.

·      Hagg Hill. This is probably the one that most people think is the winner of the title. It is longer than Blake Street but not as long as Jenkin Road, and has a consistent steep gradient. The junction at the top has apparently been changed to give cars coming up right of way over those on the main cross road, as anyone stopping their car at that point is likely to be in trouble. Shame it isn’t in old Sheffield, really.

Before I knew it, I was using a website I had found (www.plotaroute.com) which you can use to plan cycling routes, but which crucially shows the highest and lowest points above sea level, and also calculates the gradients along that route.

I used that to calculate the length and average gradient of each of the three, and added in Prospect Place for good measure.

Can you guess what my challenge is yet?

The results, in alphabetical order:

	Distance	Average Gradient	Maximum Gradient
Blake Street	180m	14.4%	20%
Hagg Hill	270m	16.7%	20%
Jenkin Road	1020m	9.1%	23%
Prospect Place	90m	17.8%	20%

So, there you have it. Prospect Place is the steepest hill in Sheffield. Its average gradient is the highest, so it is clearly the steepest. Of course, it is also the shortest by some distance. But what about Blake Street? Its only twice as long, and 3.5% less steep – so would that be harder or easier than Prospect Place? Hagg Hill clearly must be harder than both, as it is almost the same gradient as Prospect Place but the same length as both Prospect Place and Blake Street together. Of the four,  Jenkin Road has the steepest section, and is longer than all the others put together – would that make it toughest of the lot? And what about the other hills mentioned on the forum? Each of them had people who thought they were the hardest, steepest, toughest.

I ran the ones that got repeated mentions through the same website, and in all had a list of 26 hills. But, how can you decide which is hardest?

I gave it some thought. Clearly what we need here is a spreadsheet with some kind of complicated calculation. Luckily, I am an accountant. Spreadsheets are what I do.

I worked out a suitably convoluted weighting system, and this allowed me to rank the 26 hills in an order that I felt showed how difficult they were. Jenkin Road came top, mostly because I felt that a long tough hill would be harder than short but really tough hill.

Does that make it sound like it is reasonably easy, just long? Ha! Check out this video of the Giant Shimano Tour de France team practicing on Jenkin Road - those are professional cyclists looking like they are almost at a standstill!!

The question is, what makes a hill hard? Length or steepness? How much should the maximum gradient affect the rating?

There really is only one way to find out which is the hardest hill.

That's right - THE CHALLENGE.

Someone is going to have to try and cycle up all 26 of those hills.

Me.

Early Days – leading up to the idea

Last year, I started to cycle into work. The idea was to lose weight, get fitter, and at the same time save a bit of money on bus fares. At first, all I could manage was once a week. I had an old Trek mountain bike, which was slow and heavy. Cycling into work was pretty easy. Sheffield is famously built on seven hills, and I live most of the way up one of them. It means I have to go up my hill first, but only for a few hundred metres, then there is a long fast downhill and after that it is about 8km of very slightly downhill into the city centre. Easy.

Cycling home, well, that was a different matter altogether. The first 8km is now slightly uphill; OK (though I needed a couple of rests when I first started) but then that long fast downhill becomes a long slow climb up to the top of the hill before the short drop back to my house. I never quite got all the way up that climb, in fact I barely made it past halfway before having to stop and push – but only once my legs had stopped shaking.

 

In case you are thinking I am using poetic licence here, that hill is 1.4 km long, and climbs from 400 ft above sea level to around 700 ft. The traditional measure of a mountain is 1,000 feet, so you have to cycle up about a third of a mountain! It is ‘only’ 5.6% gradient on average, but has sections that reach 17% that suck all of the energy out of your legs and turns them into jelly.

Trust me, it is seriously tough.

Then; a revelation. I figured it out. I was trying to do this on a big, old, heavy mountain bike. Obviously, the bike was the problem here. Of course I couldn’t get up that hill. Clearly, what I needed was ... a new bike!

Luckily, my work has a cycle to work scheme, and before I could think too much about it, I was picking up a brand new bike. This wasn’t a mountain bike. No, it was cool, it was modern, it was “urban”.

Look at it! I was in love!!

For those that like that kind of thing, it is a Giant Roam 2, has a lockout suspension (I really had no idea what this meant, but it sounded cool, so I figured it must be a good idea) and has disc brakes (which don’t sound cool but are the best thing I could have ever got). It is much lighter than the mountain bike and has a much better range of gears.

First time out, I made it all the way up that climb. See, I told you it was the bike.

The Short Version

Eight years ago, I completed the Oxfam Trailwalk challenge, which is walking 100km in less than 30 hours. Me and my team managed it in just over 25 hours, with no little difficulty, so my challenge fix had been well and truly met.

I am older and wiser now. Well, older, but as you may soon realise, not so much wiser...

The short version is that I have found myself a new challenge. No team to do it with me this time. No support team to ensure I have everything I need. No Oxfam or Gurkhas to organise and facilitate. Just me and my challenge.

The long version? Well, that may be long indeed…