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Box Hill Charity Cycling Leith Hill Prudential RideLondon Strava Surrey Hills

The Surrey Hills in the 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100

This video is about the Surrey Hills part of my Prudential RideLondon 100 in 2019, taking in Leith Hill and Box Hill. It’s a “director’s cut” from my full ride post at https://www.briansutton.uk/?p=1084.

The middle part of the video shows the cycling log-jam on Leith Hill, where we had to stop seven times, losing 10 minutes, on a section of no more than 400 metres, on the less steep, earlier part of the Leith Hill Lane climb.

Someone had fallen off just at the beginning of the steeper part ahead of us. Very frustrating! Apparently he rode off without thanking anyone for the help he was given to get going again.

The Leith Hill ascent is quite narrow, and there are always some cyclists walking on all the steep parts, effectively making it even narrower, which you can see this from the video.

The way to minimise such delays is to get an earlier start time, as advised by my friend Leslie Tennant, who has done the event half a dozen times. That keeps you clear of the slower riders.

But it was a great day overall, with the usual good weather, a big improvement over the previous year’s very wet weather, which I covered in my blog at https://www.briansutton.uk/?p=1108.

Here, then, is my Surrey Hills segment from the 2019 event.

The Prudential Ride London 100 Surrey hills, including Leith Hill and Box Hill

I have added here some screenshots of my Strava analysis for the Leith Hill segment, showing the speed, cadence and heart rate drops during those seven stops.

Time-based Strava analysis chart

First, the plot against time, which shows the speed drops very clearly, annotated as Stops 1 to 7. On the elevation profile, you can see that all of these were on the earlier part of the climb (shaded). The faller must had fallen at the point where the log-jam cleared (when a marshal told me what had happened, as I rode past at that point) at the end of that shaded section.

Important: Note that in this time-based x-axis chart, the time scale has the effect of lengthening (expanding) those parts of the x-axis scale (compared to the distance-based x-axis version later on), where we were ascending, as we took proportionately more time to cover a given distance during the delays (which would have been the case to a lesser extent at normal, slower uphill speeds anyway), and equivalently shortening the descending parts of the hill(s), where we cover more ground in comparatively less time. The shaded section of the chart shows this expansion effect on that (slow) part of the Leith Hill climb (behind the word “Leith”).

Strava analysis showing the 7 stops totalling 10 minutes

We see that the chart runs from about ride time 3:36:40 to 3:46:30, around 10 minutes. On the video I show that the first stop on that section was at time of day 10:47:14, and we got going again fully at 10:57:09, again about 10 minutes from beginning to end.

Distance-based Strava analysis chart

Next, the same Strava analysis, but with the graphs plotted against distance, instead of time.

As the elevation is in metres, the distance-based x-axis presents a more faithful rendition of the inclines – metres of height plotted against against kilometres of distance travelled, in the usual way.

Compared with the time-based chart above, this shows up as steeper ascending parts of all hills in the profile (slow riding), and less steep downsides for the hills (fast riding), which is usual when comparing time vs. distance based Strava ride analysis charts.

You will note that the (lighter) shaded section where the stops occurred is actually very short in the distance based graph (the light vertical line, behind the “i” in the “Leith” annotation) – it looks longer (in the time-based version, as well as apparently less steep as a result) in the darker shaded area of the time-based chart above. In reality, the steepness isn’t significantly different on that section, and it IS short.

Strava analysis showing the 7 stops totalling <400 metres

In this chart, this same section runs from just over 88.6 kms into the ride to just under 89 kms; i.e. between 350 – 400 metres from start to finish, some of which was walking, with a little riding, between periods of standing and waiting.

The little dips in the red heart rate curve at the 7 stops show up a little more clearly* on this chart too.

I eliminated the standing/waiting parts from the video, but you can see that I was moving very slowly even when trying to ride short parts of this section. Average speed on that section was, say, 400m in 10 minutes – 2.4 kms/hour, or 1.5 mph. Even I can ride up that hill a lot faster than that!

*The heart chart dips looks a little like ECG depressed t-waves. I know what those look like – I was diagnosed with depressed t-wave in a BUPA ECG test 50 years ago (for health insurance in my my first private sector job).

Because of that they also stress tested me on a treadmill, and had a problem getting my heart rate up, even raising the front of the treadmill, as well as speeding it up. So they also diagnosed brachycardia (slow heart rate). They found that my ECG returns to a normal pattern on exercise – phew!

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6Points Cycling Strava Watopia Sand & Sequoias Zwift

6Points Mallorca Zwift training ride led by Dame Sarah Storey

Dame Sarah Storey, British Olympic cycling champion, led our 6Points Mallorca Sunday training ride today. See the live stream at YouTube at

For those that enjoyed the ride, we also highlighted the 6Points Mallorca charity JustGiving page which helps a disadvantaged children’s charity, Asdica in Mallorca.

See more about Asdica, and our other charities and sponsors, at the 6Points website. Over €66,000 has been collected through 6Points events over three years.

The ride today, a mixture of peloton, sprint and minirace riding, was over 2 laps of Watopia’s Sand and Sequoias course, about 43 kms, with the minirace from the bottom of the Titan’s Grove KoM second time around. It’s a lovely course, and the minirace is a tough one at 10kms, with that KoM to start, with even the descent after that a little lumpy too.

We do the Fuego Flats sprint twice, and then take it again at the end of the minirace, which finishes at the arch on that same sprint section.

It was a very well attended ride today, with a great lead by Sarah at even pace, keeping it very much together, until the minirace start 10kms from the end at the bottom of the Titan’s Grove KoM.

I was, of course, taking my red beacon duties very seriously, and had a good little group around me for a good part of the event.

We had 218 booked to ride, with 171 riding and 133 finishers. Our podium included a son and father combo, the Scotts, divided by Bruch Wu, always at the pointed end of our miniraces.

Regulars and locals riding included (roughly in finishing order): Jed Scott (Draft, a very rapid 1st, well done!), Bruch Wu (a regular podium in our 6Points and GGCC events, 2nd), Hamish Scott (Jed’s dad, a regular and strong rider in our events, 3rd), Tony Romo (4th), Martin Smith (5th), Sean Ekblom (GGCC beacon and 6th), Beth McIver (CryoGen), Alex Fthenakis (GGCC), Del Chattelle (GGCC), Roger Bloom, Alastair Pell (Nightingale), Charlie Farnham (Storey racing), Twinny Styler (Storey racing), Sarah Storey (Beacon and Storey Racing(!)), Heather Mayne (GGCC Zwift race team), Niall Hughes (GGCC), Gavin Stewart, Colin Sinclair (RACC), Derek Brown (GGCC), Leroy Nahay, Andrea McDowell, Andy Cattanach (GGCC), Euan Gordon (GGCC Beacon), Gavin Johnston (GGCC and graphics designer for our stream screen), Scott Ballantyne (GGCC), Leslie Tennant (GGCC), Christine Catterson (GGCC), Brian Sutton (GGCC and red beacon) and Fleury Stoops (GGCC).

All ride results are at ZwiftPower for those registered ZP, or on Companion (but with lots of flyers) for everyone.

I DQd 6 riders on ZwiftPower for being ahead of the beacon at the minirace start.

Sarah will be leading for GGCC again on 6th June, on the 11.30am BST (10.30 UTC) GGCC Saturday morning training ride, and we look forward to that!

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Cycling Ride recording Strava

Latest Strava rides

Here are my latest bike rides on Strava – click on one for more details…