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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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Charity Cycling Prudential RideLondon

My 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100 with Marie Curie

Getting my ballot entry for the 2020 Prudential RideLondon 100 has encouraged me to sort my GoPro clips out from the 2019 edition, and to make this video using those and pictures from the event – mine, the official Sportograf ones, and others taken by friends. It’s 47 minutes (it’s a long Sportive, took me 6 hours or so!) but there is also a short video, to get the flavour, on my YouTube channel, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibC54aueESw. 

On both this blog AND YouTube you will find quite a lot about cycling in Mallorca and the Balearics too – my next adventure will be the 6Points Mallorca ride on May 15/16/17th – read about that on my blog pinned post, at the top. It’s a 420kms 3-day ride, with 7500m of climbing, with plenty of coffee and cake opportunities! Lots about the May 2019 here on my blog too – just search for 6Points (you’ll also find the October 2019 Ibiza/Formentera 6Points events. In October 2020, that will be a 6Points Menorca ride).

THIS post is about my own 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100, riding for Marie Curie (as I did in 2018) in memory of my mother-in-law Laura, and in thanks for the help Marie Curie gave her and us during her final illness. I will ride for them again this year, even though I have my own entry.

It was much better weather than for the 2018 edition, and I was nearly an hour faster, despite delays on a crowded Leith Hill owing to someone falling off and needing help to get going again – which he did, with no thanks given to the marshals (they told me) but causing a 10 minute delay for everyone behind – including me. Just an occupational hazard of any large Sportive.

Overall it was a great experience, and together with the Saturday freeride (also shown in the pictures) the whole weekend was the usual fulfilling, enjoyable and well-organised experience.

This year I had the special pleasure of staying with my friend, Stuart, and his family Harriet and Lily, plus riding to the start with his son, Freddie.

I rode with Stuart (and Colin) back in the early 1960s with Bruce Castle Cycling Club, before my University days and the world of work. Riding with Freddie out to the Olympic Park closed a lovely loop!

I met up with riding friends Leslie (GGCC real life riding) and Simon (GGCC Zwifter, like me nowadays) at the end (Simon was under 5 hours, Leslie just on 5 hours) at Green Park, with the BHF charity, and Leslie’s brother Stephen who will be riding in 2020, as will Leslie, Simon and I.

Then it was dinner back at Stuart’s, and the train back to Glasgow the next day. Ernie (my bike) and I had travelled down to London very smoothly by Virgin Rail, and Leslie joined us for the return trip.

What a treat the whole weekend was! I’m looking forward to the 2020 edition enormously.

My 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100
The short version, no GoPro!