Got away for a couple of days and rode up Lake Mountain and the notorious Mt Baw Baw.
Lake Mountain was gorgeous to ride, slightly variable gradients with nothing too crazy, some nice views and a flowing decent back into town where you really only needed to use your brakes for the T-junction.
Mt Baw Baw on the other hand:
For those that don't know: 6km averaging 11% with a max of 21% and 1km over 14%, some say it's the hardest climb in Australia to just get to the top of.
Strava Segment:
https://www.strava.com/segments/609777?filter=overall
Man I was wishing for a compact, or hell, just a single-speed conversion, anything to a) give me a lower gear and b) save some more weight!
Only had to stop once to catch my breath on the way up, I thought it was a decent idea to try and maintain a half-reasonable cadence, whereas I should've slowed it down a bit more to keep the HR down and oxygen flowing, at one point higher up, where I was "chatting" with another cyclist who was also stupid enough to give it a crack I was doing ~45 rpm and out of gears.
I ended up stopping a few times on the way back down to let the brakes cool off, I wasn't comfortable descending it at the required 60+ kmph to not use the brakes overly much! I can report back that with a HC climb and trying to keep your speed around 30-40 kmph, even the lock ring holding the rotor on will get quite warm, as will the spider and don't even try touching the braking surface as that was noticeably radiating heat!!!
This is very much a climb to ride a <5kg ultra-weight-weenie bike up and then take a car back down!
