Here it is! Inspired by the 100 Climbs leader boards over on Veloviewer, it’s our very own competition for Ribble Valley members who like a climb, or even those who just tolerate or even hate any gradient but want a friendly challenge. Twenty of The North’s finest climbs, for aspiring grimpeurs (climbers in English) to tackle.
Think this is just for the lightweight mountain goats? Think again, points will be awarded for simply dragging your carcass up each climb, bonus points will be awarded for the top ten placed riders for each climb. So in theory, someone who puts the effort in to ride all the climbs at a steady pace, may well score more points than an aspiring Pantani who only rides a few but is quicker.
Now the bad news, as I can’t accept written notes from fellow riders confirming that you have ridden a particular climb, and set a new world record whilst doing so, you will have to log your rides on the dreaded Strava website. You will also need to join the Ribble Valley Cycling Club Strava club, this will enable me to filter the Ribble Valley wheat from the general public chaff, and will also filter the rides by date, so only ascents undertaken from January 1st 2016 until 31st October 2016 will count.
> View the Ribble Valley CRC Strava Club
Now for the climbs, there are twelve ‘local’ and eight ‘away’ climbs. The away climbs are split, four in the Lakes and four in the Dales. I’ve picked climbs that I know club members have ridden, either on official club trips or events such as the Fleet Moss Audax, or simply on solo days out. Either way all the climbs are less than an hours drive if you wanted to park and ride them.
So without further ado, here are the climbs in all their segmented glory,
Local
Yorkshire Dales
Lake District
So there you go, the aim of this, is hopefully to encourage people to go out and ride a few places they may not have been before, I’ll try and do a monthly update on how it is panning out, it would be great if people could share their rides, photos or even a few words (nice ones of course) as it is supposed to be a bit of fun.
The competition is open to all members, free of charge and who knows, at the end of September there may be a small prize for the winner. Fifty pence limit!
To keep track or your progress (…and that of your competitors) our friend Ben at VeloViewer has come up with a page to show the current standings!