Originally Posted by
Amt0571
I live in Spain. 30% is not sustained, but the hardest part of a climb. I've done it with the MTB several times and it took almost 30min to climb and I definitely had to use my 22/32 on several parts of it.
Checking on a GPX track I recorded there, It shows a maximum grade of 27%, and there's mostly nothing less than 15%. It's a 3.5km climb, so it's quite long considering the grades.
Granted, but isn't that a worst case? Maybe road bikers just don't climb that kind of hill. Any more than they would go on a mountain trail. Nothing like that exists in the major stage races that I know of. Perhaps it is just not a route that is intended for road cycling. You can just avoid it when on the road bike. It is much more important on the road bike to have the intermediate gears than huge cogs for that kind of climbing. I hope you don't live at the top or bottom of that road. That would present a bit of a problem.