Col de Box Hill - Saturday 25 May 2013

Box Hill - it is spoken with reverence and hallowed tones amongst the cycling fraternity. The long, almost Alpine like ascent, the sheer level of ascent, the views, a challenge so tough that it struck fear into the Olympic Road Race participants. Its been called the Alpe d'Huez of the South even. Given this description I felt that when an opportunity arose to take on this immense challenge that I just could not turn it down.

And its climb #14 in 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs - I have not done many of the climbs in this book (I have done #1 - Cheddar Gorge (Wiggle Mendips Sportive in 2011), #98 - Rhigos and #99 The Bwlch - although not quite all of it! Both of the latter were on the 2010 Dragon Ride). The book says that the surface was not great but as part of the "Olympic Legacy" for me the surface was absolutely fantastic - clearly resurfaced only for the race. The other roads that I rode in the vicinity were pretty normal - i.e. average to dreadful!

I was taking my wife down to visit some of her family and also to visit a joint friend of ours who I went to university with and was my best man. From the Midlands the route to Sussex is M40, M25 and A24 and Box Hill sits just on the A24 so an opportunity too good to miss. I put the bike in the car and we headed off. The M40 was as normal no issue but the M25 was its typical pain taking us an hour to get from the M40 junction round to the A24 exit. This put us a little behind schedule. We managed to park at the Rykers Cafe at the bottom and after a quick change and minor re-assembly of the bike off I went. Some pre-checking of segments around Box Hill had shown there was a loop of about 8 miles that would avoid just hill reps and see a little more of Surrey - this is this segment: BoxHill Ballbreaker. I planned to ride this loop twice and do a 3rd final climb and then turn around giving me about 18-19 miles and 3 ascents in about 1 hour - after all my wife would be sitting in the car at the cafe so I could not and did not want too spend too long. I also programmed the route (1 loop) into my Garmin so I could just ride and not bother about trying to navigate

The main problem with the route was that Rykers Cafe is literally 100-200 metres from the start of Zig Zag Road which is the Box Hill climb so I knew that I had to be sensible on the first climb and not blow up through being completely cold and with no warm up. I did cycle down to the A24 from the car park exit to add in about 200 more meters but there was no way that this would be anything like enough to warm up properly, so was in the little front ring from the word go.

Turning onto Zig Zag road was a little exciting - I recognised lots of bits from the Olympic coverage and it was full of cyclists. For that first climb it was difficult to know quite what gear to be in. My legs felt fresh and felt like I needed a higher gear, but I resisted and stayed in 34-19 for the run to the first hairpin. Up to the first bend its mostly straight but there are some very small curves of a few degrees from the straight ahead and the gradient is reasonably flat, with a slight kick up to the first bend. The first bend is quite wide and easy to negotiate - its not really a hairpin at all. There is then a short straight section with an almost constant gradient to the second hairpin which really is a hairpin - very tight and with a noticeable height change across the corner. This is followed by another straight of constant gradient until a final 90degree right turn and short (100-200m) climb to the cafe at top. And that's it.

1.6 miles long, 410 feet of ascent and an average grade of 5%. Its only 3/10 in the 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs.

The first climb I did in 8:01, the second in 7:50 and the final one in 7:58. Disappointing that there was not a bigger improvement from the first climb but re-assuringly consistent. What is absurd that in this shot ride I got 55 achievements! For Box Hill alone there are about a dozen segments at least! And the number of riders is amazing compared to where I normally ride.

This Segment has 9017 riders and has been ridden 49551 times. I came 2709th.
This Segment has 8085 riders and has been ridden 39818 times. I came 1647th.

Here is the Strava elevation profile for my ride showing that it is made up of 98% segments:

And so it goes on.

For me I was pleased to be in the top 1/3rd to top 1/4. This is about the best I could hope for. I would have been disappointed to be in the lower half.

On the day I rode no one passed be on any of the 3 climbs and I passed a reasonable number of people.

I mentioned the sheer number of people riding the segments compared to in the Midlands. There were literally hundreds of people going up, coming down or sitting at the Cafes at the top and bottom. It was like riding a sportive with so many people about. A lot of people looked like they had ridden down from London or up from Surrey and Sussex. I may have had an advantage on my climbs with hardly any miles in my legs compared to some of these people to be fair.

I spent a lot of the space above talking about Box Hill but the loop around from the top back to the bottom of Zig Zag road was equally pleasant - and there were hardly any other cyclists here - they obviously mostly only come to ride the hill itself but I fully recommend the loop that I rode (it was not the Olympic route though)

Here are some pictures of Box Hill from other peoples pages.

First Hairpin

The Second hairpin

The Long Straight (looking down)

The Long Straight (looking up) with the fresh graffiti

The picture showing the writing on the road - there was lots of support for Mark Cavendish shows it freshly painted but it is all still readable. It was quite exciting!