Another difference. In a time trial, it’s as much about the gear you’ve bought as it is cycling ability. Turn up to a local club 10 and you’ll find the car park of the race HQ (which is always exclusively either a church hall or a primary school) littered with expensive turbo trainers and specialist TT machines that mostly cost in the multiple thousands of pounds. Unless you are very, very good (like, Steve Cummings good), you cannot win a TT on a regular road bike – you have to get the gear.

On the other hand, there is very little you can buy to make you go uphill faster, barring a canister of helium to use to fill up your tyres with, or a hacksaw to lop off the ends of your drop bars.

More differences. In a hill climb there are spectators – and by that I mean actual people who came with the specific intention of watching your hurty face and not just confused dog walkers. Absolutely nobody in their right minds will stand on the side of a dual carriageway in Buckinghamshire to watch a time trial.

If the above gives a little idea bit about the ‘what’, we should probably talk about the ‘why’ too.

Why ride in one of these unique painfests? Well, it is vastly easier to take part in a hill climb or a time trial than it is to participate in a crit race.

There are no categories like there are in road racing, so any rider can enter any race they like. You’ll also find that the lack of a charging peloton of novices provides considerably fewer crashes, smashed frames and shattered collarbones.

I rolled up to the start line, a chalk line drawn beneath a B&Q gazebo and presided over by a wizened man in a folding camping chair with a clipboard and a stopwatch.

“Number 67,” he barked. The man wearing dossard 67 glided up to the line. The master of the Gazebo of Pain began a countdown, “5,4,3,2…”. And off went Mr. 67.

I was 68. Next to go. Suddenly I felt very, very nervous. It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. I had read online that the worst thing to do would be to go off too hard, but with a modest group of racers behind me waiting to go, I felt the pressure to perform.

As my countdown reached one, I pushed off hard, hammering the pedals and trying to gain enough momentum to sit comfortably back in the saddle. The gradient pushed back immediately. After 500m I felt the white, harsh taste in the back of my throat.

I had done exactly what I meant not to do and gone too hard at the beginning. At about 800m I saw the first spectator, then heard the man on the microphone. I turned a slight bend and could see all the way up the ‘straight’ to the finish. “God, it looks steep,” I thought. “I might not make it.”

I pushed on, with the lactic acid already filling my legs. This was an awful idea. Why do people do this?

And then I entered the tunnel of noise where the spectators were thickest. These total strangers were cheering me, a complete nobody, as I put in a really quite terrible time in an obscure amateur bike race. I felt like a rock star.

I stood out of the saddle and kicked with everything I had left. I managed two or three pedal strokes before plonking back down once again. And then, mercifully, it was over. I sort of half-dismounted, half-fell into a ditch just past the finish line, wheezing profusely.

It felt awful, but excellent. As I lay there, wondering if it was really anatomically possible to cough up a lung, I knew I would be doing lots more hill climbs…