I built a bike for a 22km Strava segment that nobody was going for, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat

One of the great privileges of this job is, within reason, access to more or less anything the bike industry can produce. I’ve seen colleagues create bike builds for events, gravel superbikes or aero missiles, all well-curated and thought out. Until now, primarily because bike events don’t really appeal to me, I’ve not leapt into building specific, but now here we are… I’ve gone and built a hill climb bike with a twist.

My local club, Newtown Park CC, runs its Hills and Pils ride every Wednesday. The route goes up 13 of the nastiest hills that Bristol, a famously hilly place, has to offer, all of them short and steep, many hitting 15% and some approaching 20%. In 22.2km the route packs in 553m of elevation gain before it finishes at a brewery (hence the Pils), and the current KOM, for the whole route as one segment, was a smidge under an hour at 54:58. Given I have a background in cyclocross, the opportunity to make my eyes pop for an hour in a new way was too good to pass up.