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What do you need? Well obviously a bike! The lighter the bike the better: saddle bags, pumps, bottles and bottle cages can be disposed of for these short events. Many specialists ride a single fixed gear on modified track bikes. This makes the bike much lighter and (if you ask the aficionados) allows pedalling momentum to be more easily maintained. However correct gear selection is crucial (because you can't change it once you've started!) and on hills where there is a large range of gradients a single gear may not be the best option. Danny Axford
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hill-climb is essentially a time-trial where, in the same way as
a 10 or a 25, riders ride the course alone and unassisted at
1 minute intervals. The difference is hill-climbs tend to be much
shorter (1/2 to 2 miles typically) and are all up hill! The Tour
de France had its own hill-climb this year, the famous Alpe d'Huez
stage. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective!)
we do not have climbs as big as this in the UK , British hill-climbs
usually end up in a 2-10 minute lung-bursting effort. So the rules
are simple: fastest to cover the course wins but a word of warning!
WALKING IS NOT ALLOWED and can result in