Being less hungover than usual on Sunday, I took the opportunity to ride up Mt Majura.

I rode up it once before, in March or April – I forget. That time I went up the south western side, on the dirt trails, and spent most of the “ride” walking my bike because it’s so step.

Not a bad old day.

This time I headed north up the highway, then along Majura road and finally up the bitumen road which goes up the back of Mt Majura. Then I rode down the crazy-steep dirt tracks.

For the doubters, a pic from the very top.

It’s still pretty steep even on the bitumen. First gear for most of the climb for me.

Vital statistics were:

Ahem. Pretty piss-weak really, especially if you’ve been watching Le Tour as I have.

As a comparison (ha!), some interesting historical stats on the Tour here. Here’s a graph of average speed over time:

As you can see, on the most recent Tour Lance Armstrong averaged 41.654 Km/h over the 3,608 Km length of the Tour. That’s graph’s not quite the whole story, for some of those years the total distance was much longer, but still an impressive trend.

It’s sort of sad to see Armstrong retire, he certainly doesn’t seem like he’s starting to fade. If anything he was more dominant in this Tour than previous ones. On the other hand next year’s Tour will be the most exciting in years, because there’s no clear favourite.