I decided to try and cycle up Birdlip last night, which for those that don't know is a big massive hill in Gloucestershire (little Witcombe to Birdlip). It's a category 3 hill on Strava (although some segments show as 4?), god knows what 4 and HC are like! I've never attempted anything like it before but I fancied a go. I'll keep going back every fortnight and see how I get on. As for progress, well, you guessed it, I didn't make it up. I got to the final right hand corner and I could literally see the end, but I was exhausted, borderline puking and had nothing left. I could have probably dug in and carried on, but I didn't want to be in the situation of having to cycle home without any wits about me.
Maybe next time I'll try some gel or an energy bar. I stopped 4 or 5 times to have a rest, it's by far the hardest thing I've done so far on a bike! Quads were burning & heart pounding. In my feeble defence, I tried to fix the indexing on my bike before I went out and mostly succeeded, except it wouldn't stay in the granny cog so I did it all in one below. I could get it to go on the granny cog which made much more of a difference than I expected but it didn't stay there for long. My bike goes in for a service on Saturday and I pick it up two weeks after with a holiday in between, so my next attempt won't be for 3 weeks or so.
According to Strava, it was just under 500 feet of elevation in a mile, not sure what the entire thing is.
I will be back (with a fixed granny gear and some gel/energy bars.