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It’s an age-old adage in cycling circles that big boys can’t climb hills. If you’re riding in France, you might substitute cols for hills; hence, big boys can’t climb cols.

One day years ago outside Boronia Station I’m approached by three strapping, swaggering lads. I brace myself for trouble. Imagine my relief when one of them looks me over and inquires affably, “Ow’s it goin’, big boy?”

I don’t see myself as a big boy but apparently others do. I’m a mere five foot ten in the old money, or 178 centimetres in the new currency. I’d be a rover in AFL if they hadn’t morphed into amorphous mid-fielders, or mids. I’m rover size but robust: big bones, sturdy legs, a more than adequate torso. And big boys can’t climb cols.

This thought is plastered to my forehead as I stand on the pedals and heave my trunk and branches up Straws Lane to Mount Macedon. I sit down again because when I do stand my back wheel spins on the wet road surface.

A sign at the bottom where the lane comes off the Woodend-Lancefield Road indicates a 10 per cent gradient for two kilometres and it’s right on the mark, with some eight percent sections compensated by some at 12. Any way you dice it, it’s a grunt.

Straws Lane turns left into the Mount Macedon Road proper and another sign warns of more 10 per cent climbing. This one isn’t accurate: the grade never gets above seven. But by now I’m in the cloud and it’s cool and moist. I eschew the chance to punish myself for an extra four kilometres at the turn-off to the memorial cairn. I’m already 908 metres above sea level and I have a train to catch.

I descend the front of the mountain under brakes but still crack 79kph. I pedal through the leafy Macedon township to the old Calder Highway, now Black Forest Drive, and climb in dribs and drabs up to Woodend. Will I wait here for the train or risk beating it to Kyneton where I started my ride into a stiff southerly?

With a less stiff southerly behind me I power out of town, zigging left along the Carlsruhe Central Road and zagging north onto the Kyneton-Trentham Road. I’ll catch the 11:38 easily.

The station mistress does nice things to my libido, a most unusual characteristic for a railway employee. I alight at 12:22 and I’m home at 12:25 with 66.11kms under the belt at 24.5kph.

Big boys can climb hills; they just can’t do it quickly.