Melbourne has always been a big cycling city. It’s all because Melbourne is a rider’s playground. With famously variable weather, good roads and interesting topography, there’s a particular ride for every kind of rider. There are a million rides and a million ways to ride them in this city.

If you’ve got 3 hours, fang it up Mount Pleasant Road in the city’s outer north east. It’s a punchy 65km loop from the MAAP office, racking up close to 1000m in elevation and a regular on our morning office rides if we want to push it a little further mid-week. You can roll out as a group up until the last 7.5km where it gets harder with four main short climbs.

If you happened to find yourself with a little more time, take Broad Gully Road through Nutfield on the way to St. Andrews for where you’ll find a cafe called A Boy Named Sue, which has the best brekkie pizza going around (they also run a city spot called Laserpig). If you have another hour, then you can hit the King Lake climb, which is about 5% average for 7km, before descending back down and returning to Melbs. That would net you around 110km and 2000m climbing.

If you haven’t got that long, the Yarra Boulevard is a pocket-sized estimation of Melbourne riding, with a bunch of hills, gum trees and some killer views of the Melbourne skyline, all within a short roll from the city.

What else? Get your bike serviced at Saint Cloud on Brunswick Street. Get a coffee from Proud Mary and nick around the corner to their roastery at Aunty Pegs and load up on some of Peru’s finest. Spin over to our shop in North Melbourne and get fitted for some kit. But this is an eating city don’t forget, so save some coin for a fancy dinner on Gertrude Street  – maybe at Poodle or Marion. End the night at one of our diviest bars, maybe Heartbreaker in the city. And then get up and do it all again. It’s that kind of city.