Mt Cootha, Would You Do It...

Bunyip

...on an old Huffy mountain bike from KMart in early September?

Hi guys,

I've been living in the Land of the Free (aka America) for a year now but I'm finally heading home to Brisbane next month. A scant week is basically all the time I've been able to get off work, and since being away I've fallen absolutely in love with biking. I do about 60 miles per week at the moment, most of it is decent hillwork and am trying to increase both of these. I've been doing heaps of cycling here in Boston on a Raleigh mountain bike, and a little in England but nothing really in Brisbane (except Coro Drive) so I thought it would be really fun to tackle something hard next time I was back in Oz. I'm by no means an advanced cyclist, so I thought I'd get your advice. Is this way too ambitious? What's the mileage of say bottom to summit? Or maybe more helpful, from say Taringa train station to the summit? And remind me please, how cold is it in the first week of a Brisbane Sept?

If anyone's got time to reply that would be terrific!

Thanks,
Jess

stigfinnaren

I guess you are already back in Bris by now, but Mt Cootha is very dooable.

Before taking up racing I used to do it on my old hybrid. The only really tough bit is the climb from the Botanical Gardens (Toowong) to the turn that decides whether you go around clockwise or anticlockwise. The UQ club runs a time trial that goes from the Bot Gnds to the the ABC tower anticlockwise. This is the harder way around, but gives you great descent if you follow all the way around. Going up clockwise gets you to the summit quicker.

You'll find that there are a lot of people using it for training on most mornings.

I forget the distance, perhaps 10km for a complete circuit?