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God, shut my mouth! I don't know whether to laugh or cry
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Hill climbing. It's probably the toughest discipline in cycling that you've never heard of
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In the months of September and October every year in the UK, you can always find a group of cyclists racing up the most hellish gradient they can find
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in what can only be described as second-degree fun. And the format for these events is pretty simple, actually
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Basically, it's rider against the clock up the steepest piece of tarmac that the organisers can realistically find
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which is why today we are here at Swains Lane in London for the nichest of niches, an urban hill climb
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Sam has dragged me here today to Swains Lane, which is arguably one of the toughest climbs in the capital
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900 metres, an 8% average gradient might not sound like much, but this one is going to hurt
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20% maximum gradients, full gas racing, and Sam's even got a little trick up his sleeve
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which is going to make my day even more painful. That's absolutely right. As an ex-junior hill
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climb champ, I think that you've already got enough of an advantage over pretty much
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everybody here. So I've brought along this. This is the rally chopper. Now it was created back in 1972, and then it went on to become
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really popular in the 80s thanks to films like E The Goonies and then more recently Stranger Things So this bike really does have a proper cult following which is why you going to be riding it today So Joe how are you actually feeling about this challenge Well as much as I not
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looking forward to lugging all 18 kilograms of this bike up Swain's Lane today I think it does
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fit the ethos of the event quite well. There's Brompton categories today, there's two categories
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for cargo bikes so I think actually I'm not going to be quite as out of place as I might be in a
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traditional hill climb you're going to fit right in to be honest so if you had a goal for today
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though what what would you like to achieve well to put things into perspective I think the course
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record for this climb is around just over the one minute mark I had a look at what the best
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bronx and time was last year and that was about two minutes 12 okay I will genuinely be over the
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moon with anything less than three and a half minutes three and a half minutes okay I reckon
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we make that the target for the day and if you can get under three and a half i'd be very impressed
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and actually to be honest i'll be impressed if this bike makes it to the top in one piece
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry
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How are you feeling, Joe? Yeah, it's been a while since I've felt like this, to be honest
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Yeah, it was really good fun, though. I chucked it into gear 2 to start on the less steep bit
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and it pinged into gear three and my legs went like sat back down knocked into one um sort of measured my effort on the less deep section and then when it kicked up just
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yeah yeah yeah it was good so joe how'd you get on you know what all in all not too bad um i think pacing as i mentioned early
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on camelman was pretty good with hindsight actually i think the pacing was better than i realized
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initially i thought maybe i went out a little bit too easy but with hindsight i think i got it pretty
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much spot on so happy with how i rode and pretty happy with the time as well so put us out of our
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mystery what was your time two minutes 21 is the official time but the thing is i think we need to
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put some of that into context because i think the winning time of the day or the fastest time of the
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day was 1.17 or 1.18. It was about that. So essentially you were a minute off the quickest
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of the day and we know people have gone slower as well. Yeah and in fairness I'd be really
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interested to see how that compares to the Bromptons as well because as I said last year I think it was 2 minutes 12 or something was the quickest Brompton time but yeah we'd have to see
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I'd be really chuffed with that as well. To be honest I'm pretty glad I made you come up on this
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bike because the amount of love that the rally chopper has had today has been phenomenal. Absolutely. People have been throwing it back to their past. Kids have been loving it so
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So all in all, a fantastic day at the Urban Hill Climb. If you guys enjoyed the video, then please do drop it a like
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subscribe to the channel for more content, and we will see you again very soon
