Quote:
Originally Posted by trener1
I rode it once (the wall not the race) and actually I had the opposite thought, with all of the hype I was expecting it to be super hard, but it wasn't really all that tough.
Now doing it after 150 miles at race pace is of course a different story, but really as far as climbs go it wasn't that tough, hence the race was mostly won by sprinters (and also the fact that it was pretty far from the finish).
It still made for great spectacle and parties though.
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Yah it seems like in today's world where 34x34 is a normal low gear on what they are selling as road bikes a lot of people would be less impressed by it.
It's short at 0.5 miles. 17% is steep but not horrific, and if the whole thing is only 0.5 miles the steep part it likely something most can power through with the average grade being 8% which is pretty easily within the realm of normal gearing. If you weren't a climber it would have seemed WAY worse 20 years ago if your bike had a 39x23 or 39x25 low gear.
But IMO any race is made better by having something like that in it!