A cyclist has ridden to the top of Mount Ventoux on an unmodified Mark 2 Raleigh Chopper from the 1970s, raising money for the cancer charity Leuka.
Matt Richardson, who completed his effort yesterday, has raised nearly £3,000 for the charity.
He rode the route from Bedoin, consisting of 1,617 metres over 21.8 km: the most famous and reputedly the most difficult ascent. The road to the summit has an average gradient of 7.43%.
On his blog, Matt reported:
I felt quite springy on the lower slopes. I was glad of the morning warmth and sunshine and felt cautiously optimistic of my chances, although I knew it would all depend on what happened in the forest.
The previous day’s training ride had filled me with dread. Riding up a mountain is a completely different proposition from riding up a hill. The fatigue comes in more slowly and is far deeper. This is why rhythm is so important.
You don’t need rhythm to smash your way up a Chiltern hill half a mile long but if you don’t have it on a 22km mountain, you’re going to suffer far more than if you do. As I could see the trees becoming more dense and the gradient increasing with a couple of kicks and a hair pin bend. I began to feel sick with nerves.
As with most nightmares about things, the reality isn’t as bad. I had wanted this section to start all night and now it was real, my adrenalin was coursing.
The Chopper’s squeaking and creaking was getting worse and I was worried for a while that it would fail somehow. It kept on and I decided to use the noise to help my rhythm.
I made another decision: to keep up the cadence I had established, no matter what. This meant that I began overtaking cyclists on proper bikes, a couple who had previously overtaken me.
This wasn’t a deliberate strategy. My fear of cramp and the Chopper’s lack of climbing gears meant that I preferred to ride at a pace that allowed me to turn the pedals at a reasonable rate and, although it meant I was breathing hard for the entire climb, at least I wasn’t going to be stationary between pedal strokes.
The net effect was that I was moving past some people with more suitable bikes. I had been in Sturmey Archer gear one since the beginning of the forest and would have loved a zero and even a minus one but, since there weren’t, kept on. – Road.cc
Read the full blog here.
