If you’re unfamiliar with the British hill climb season, the format is pretty simple; find a hill and see who can ride up the fastest. Taking place on short steep climbs, riders set off at one-minute intervals and try to empty the tank in one brutal gurning effort. It sounds weird, but it’s great fun and I look forward to it every year.
During the 2015 season, I rode a standard bike with gears; it was super high-end and served me well. So for 2016 I wanted to try something different and with the 2016 Nationals looking like they could suit a fixed geared bike, I decided to source what I thought would be the perfect tool for that race. It needed to be light and singlespeed, but still stiff enough to handle the stresses and strains of hill climb racing.
- The course: The National Hill Climb Championships on Bank Road in Matlock
- The horse: Engineered Bikes E.S.P custom fixed gear
- The equipment goal: An efficient, lightweight machine, designed for one thing in mind, lactate oblivion
My Engineered frame
First port of call on my quest for anti-gravity prowess was the frame. As I wanted a fixed gear, it ideally needed to have 120mm horizontal track dropouts. There are lots of track frames that fit the bill, but they’re built purely towards stiffness and power so come up relatively heavy. I was after something more svelte, which meant going fully bespoke.
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Bristol-based custom frame specialists Engineered bikes seemed like the perfect fit and they were extremely enthusiastic about the project from the start. After a few meetings with David and Adrian (founder and creative director) back in May 2016, we settled on our design: Scandium aluminium tubes, carbon seatpost, track dropouts, and no cable stops, cage or brake mounts. This would keep everything sleek, simple and obviously nice and light.
But perhaps the most efficient mod in terms of shedding grams would be polishing instead of painting the frame. I love a fancy paint job as much as the next cycling nerd and could have had anything on my frame. But all that paint can add up to 300g, so by polishing and then sandblasting the graphics we kept the frame paint free and, vitally, the weenie in me sated.
The happy off shoot of this method was that the smooth welds and mirror finish on the frame looked totally bad-ass. There’s nothing like a product design for pure performance that still looks great and I think Engineered nailed it with my frame.
The finishing kit
So how did I get on?
The final question
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