Friday 7th April - Streatley Hills

Friday 7th April - Streatley Hills/Off to the Isle of Wight

Took a day off today. Planning to go off to the Isle of Wight for the weekend so no chance of cycling, so thought I had better put some miles into the bank in advance. Headed off to Streatley, a small town on the left bank of the River Thames (with a twin Goring on the right bank). Went there because it has the steepest hill that I know of round and about here. It is short but sharp going up 110m in under 1km so an average of around 12.5%, but feels harder because it gets steeper the further up you ride so the final 100m is 17%. The other good thing about this hill is that there is a back road down to the bottom that winds down 5km. This forms a nice 6km lap. (here it is if interested>


I went with the hope of doing 5 laps and happy to say I managed this, evening adding on an extra lap in reverse. Part of the reason for doing the laps was to try different ways to tackle the hill. Interestingly my first lap, which I did seated in lowest (30x27) also felt the hardest but I think that was fear of the unknown. I ended up finding that when the hill was going up at less than 10% then seated in second(30x24)/third(30x21) low was the most comfortable but once it got past 10% then standing up and turning over the second low was the easiest option for me at least. When doing this my pulse remained at less than 160bpm so I was working hard but not pushing myself to the limit.

Headed home happy feeling pretty happy with the day and then went off to the IOW with Mrs M.