Crystal Palace Challenge

Many test themselves on the cobbles of Flanders, the high peaks of the Alps or embark on ultra-distance events. Club Cafe Paradou has experienced these.

Some challenges are closer to home.

Combining climbing skill, route finding and memory, the CCP CPC pits rider against the lattice of roads up the berg of South London. The essence is simple – ride up and down the hill to get to 1000 metres of vertical ascent as quickly as you can, and in as short a horizontal distance as possible.

Crystal Palace is situated 110m above sea level on resistant strata of the Claygate beds. This forms a 3 x 6 km ridge starting in One Tree Hill then Sydenham Hill, Anerley Hill, Gypsy Hill, South Norwood Hill, before petering out at Streatham Hill. Its all one ridge, with tasty climbing on both sides.

To avoid potential participants doing reps up Fountain drive, which is pretty much the antithesis of everything the CCP stands for, there are rules for the Challenge.

1 Challengers must ride 1000m ascent on Crystal Palace hill only. 
2 Riders cannot cross their own path 
3 Riders cannot take the same road twice, even in opposite directions. 
4 Participants cannot use a pre-mapped route using, for instance a GPS device or a map on the ride – it has to be from memory. 
5 All routes must start and finish from the same point.
6 All contending attempts must be logged on Strava, and then the route linked to on twitter using #CCPCPC and linking to @jround999

No challenge is without a Leaderboard. And no leaderboard is without controversies. The adjudicators are impressed with anyone who completes the Challenge. But are they more impressed with a rider who does this in a fast time, or someone who really finds some elevation or an intricate route.

Currently ranking is based on time, with equal times split by the rider who has the lowest horizontal/vertical ratio. Awards are given according to time: 
Platinum – sub 2 hours 
Gold – 2.00 – 2.15 
Silver – 2.15 – 2.30 
Bronze – 2.30 – 3.00

	Date	Athlete	Time	Elevation (m)	H/V	Strava	Award
1	20-11-22	Mark Bailie	2:42	1034	43.08	link	Bronze
2	20-11-22	Jonathan Round	2:42	1045	44.03	link	Bronze
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