A perfect day for a Sunday ride

stucey said:

Have had my bike for a couple of weeks now, enjoying every minute of it.
Starting off riding for about an hour at a time, still leaves me with
enough energy to go for a jog when I get back. Anyway, decided to ride
up Mt. Dandenong on Sunday. House is about 7-8 km's from the base, so
that is a nice warm up along Swansea Rd. to Mt. Dandenong tourist Rd.

Averaged about 16-19kph on the way up,

That's not bad for that climb, I assume you started at the
roundabout? Try going up the other side from Ferntree Gully
or up the 1:20 ()mountain hwy from The Basin) for some
variety.

saw a few lucky buggers riding

Quoted message said:

down...obviously they had already done all the hard work. This is the
second time I have done this ride, although the first time i didn't go
all the way to the Observatory and I wasn't sure how I would go as my
OCR1 is only a double, but did most of the climb in the second easiest
gear without any problems.

Got up the top, couldn't even see the city due to smog, and headed back
down again. I have found the traffic to be very considerate the 2 times
I have been up, giving me plenty of room on the climb, and this time on
the way down the cars were quite happy to sit behind me as I was
decending...(between 50-60kph) Not one car passed me till I was at the
bottom!

Stats:
Duration - 1:19:40.08
Distance - 35.2km
HR - 158avg/177max (Didn't overly push it)

Average HR was 158 and you don't think you were
pushing?! What's your HRmax?

Ah, I meant pushing it in terms of Max HR, average was good. My max HR is 195.

Yes, started from the roundabout. I will try those other options you mentioned, thanks.

stucey said:

That has been my longest ride so far. Saturday I set my highest max
speed at 77.3! Not a bad effort. What sort of average speeds do you
guys get on a normal sort of ride? Cheers! Stu.

77.3km/h!?!?!!

[censored].... My nerve would give out.......
No room for error there.

stucey said:

Ah, I meant pushing it in terms of Max HR, average was good. My max HR
is 195.

That puts you in E2 for most of your ride, that's pushing
moderatly hard.

See :

http://www.aboc.com.au/perl/hrcalc.pl?hrmax=195