If you haven’t yet heard about the Red Bull Bay Climb, you should keep it on your radar. For one weekend every year, over 200 cyclists hit the hilly streets of San Francisco to sprint up one of the steepest (and we mean steepest) segments in the city: Potrero Hill.

It’s a 0.32-mile (about 0.5 kilometer) climb with a gradient that tops out at a near-vertical 21 percent. For top competitors, this is a painful, all-out effort that lasts just over a minute and notoriously leaves finishers collapsed on the ground. The event is split up into four separate categories (Men’s Fixed, Women’s Fixed, Women’s Open and Men’s Open), and features a three-race format (Preliminary, Semi-finals, Final).

This year, some heavy hitters showed up and showed out, including State Bicycle Company’s Chris Tolley of Austin, Texas, who won the Men’s Fixed category in a convincing, scream-your-lungs-out fashion (think 930 watts for over a minute).

It’s not exactly surprising that Tolley took home the win—he’s been winning crits for years. But as a rider weighing over 185 pounds, his body type doesn’t exactly fit what you might expect at a hill climb. He looks like he’s built for a sprint to the line after 90 minutes of racing on flat tarmac, which makes his win that much more impressive. “I wanted to do it for everyone out there who weighs over 185 pounds, proving that you can climb hills faster than anyone else,” he said following the event.

Long Nguyen/Red Bull Content Pool

Tolley is one of the more polarizing cyclists on the scene. He races with the raw, abrasive emotion of someone who’s a seriously competitive athlete, and he hilariously narrates his race footage on his YouTube channel after a drink (or hit) or two, often calling out competitors for doing dumb sh*t during a race.

*Warning: The video below contains explicit language.

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Like his antics or not, one thing is certain: Tolley knows how to throw down the power. We caught up with him to recap his weekend at the Red Bull Hill Climb, and to find out how he trained for the event to pull off such a dominant win despite being one of the bigger guys in the field.



Bicycling: Let’s get the basics out of the way: How did you get into cycling?

CT: I actually started with BMX—not racing, but just trick bikes, and I started when I was 12 years old. I actually tore both my ACLs and my shoulder cartilage riding BMX. I used to ride pretty hard, and I had five knee surgeries by the time I was 18. The doctor told me I need to do something besides BMX to strengthen my legs because after I had surgery, they were super weak, so I figured cycling made the most sense since I already had fun doing it, and it kind of took off from there.

So you found road cycling, but how did you get into racing crits?

Crits are definitely my specialty, and I developed a knack for sprinting. I think it does come from my BMX background with a lot of quick accelerations, also being really comfortable in a pack, and basically being as close to chaos as possible. In a sprint, it’s just like that, and if you can handle it, you’ll be a pretty good sprinter. And crits almost always come down to a sprint finish. My first crit ever was the Red Hook Crit in 2014 in the pouring rain on a fixie.

Sounds like you lean more towards fixed gear racing?

I’d say it’s about a 70/30 split between fixed gear and road cycling. Since Red Hook isn’t happening this year, there are fewer crits on the U.S. calendar, and I’m the race director for my road team, so I’ve focused a bit more on road than usual. But fixed gear crits are always my favorite events, like Mission Crit was probably my favorite crit I did this year.

Racing crits is one thing, but how did you find yourself at the Red Bull Bay Climb?

It wasn’t on my radar initially since it averages 13-or-so percent grade with like 21-percent pitches, which is not necessarily my strong suit. State [Bicycle Co.] wanted to have as many people out there as possible because it was a pretty big high-profile race with Red Bull being involved, so I booked a ticket out there.

I saw the event from last year and thought it looked pretty fun. It was the end of the season and not as risky, and if you fall on a hill climb, it’s not that bad, not like a regular crit. It wasn’t too stressful, I figured I’d either win or lose, and that’s basically it.

Did you do anything to specifically train for the gradient?



I had known about it for a while, so I was training for it about two months in advance, I’d say. I wasn’t 100 percent sure I’d be able to go with my work schedule, but it was still in the back of my mind to train for it, and it’s good training for sprints in general either way. I’d do a lot hill climb work on a fixed gear, a lot of specific workouts like 30-on, 30-off stuff for training.

Tell me more about the hill climb work. What does that entail?



There’s a couple hills down around where I live in Austin, and Mount Bonnell is about the same length as far as the KOM goes. I was looking for hills in the area that were comparable, and it has a pretty steep pitch then flattens out and has one more kicker, so I’d go out there with a slightly heavier gear ratio and basically just do that as many times as I could to train for that effort.

It’s totally different than doing it on a road bike were you can hit a bailout gear if you need to. On a fixed gear, you basically have to push through and have the perfect gear ratio for the race.

What was the gear ratio you used in the final heat?

42/22. It was basically the biggest cog I could find and the smallest front chainring I could find without getting a new crank and going mountain bike style.

[Want to fly up hills? gives you the workouts and mental strategies to conquer your nearest peak.]

Was all your training done on the bike or did you hit the gym and lift any weights for that explosive power?

No, not really to be honest. I don’t squat or do anything like that, and that’s mostly because of my knees. I still need another shoulder surgery, I need a meniscus surgery right now, so I stay away from the weights.

I’ll do start/stop interval sort-of stuff, so it’s basically like a squat. It’s just standing still then explode, then stop, and keep doing that, which I think helps a lot with that sort of power.

You weigh over 185 pounds, and you’re not the stereotypical climber that everyone might expect to win something like this. What’s up with that?



It’s all power at the end of the day.”

Honestly, if you look at the guy who won the road race, he was a light climber who still did I think the same watts per kilo that I did up that climb, which is funny given our two body types. When I looked at the Red Bull race, and I saw that the average times were around a minute, I don’t know how it got developed, but that was always my strongest power relative to everything else.

I think that effort just suited me even though I do weigh a lot more, it’s almost like doing a kilo [time trial] on the track, and I’ve done a few of those before. It’s all power at the end of the day.

How did the gradient play into how you executed the race?

As far as when I decided to go, I thought I was going to lose when the guy who got second place attacked on the one section where I really didn’t want to go—the steepest part where I’m the most vulnerable.

I managed to hang on there, and the last section wasn’t as steep as the other ones, so that’s when I made my move. I definitely looked at the gradients of each one of the hills, there’s three sections, and I knew that if I wanted to get a gap and win, it’d be on the last one.

Long Nguyen/Red Bull Content Pool

Was this your last race on the calendar for this season? What a way to go out.

I have one more weekly crit in two weeks, then I’m hanging up the bike for a solid couple weeks hopefully. I get a little tempted sometimes to jump back in and start training too early, but Texas has a pretty long season, and this was the last big event of the year. I’m pretty stoked to top off the season with that one.

Michael Nystrom Freelance Writer Michael Nystrom is a two-time IRONMAN finisher and a former editor at Active Network, Muscle & Performance and Oxygen Magazine.

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