The Scenic Caves climb

Today I was able to get out on the road bike and give the Caves road a try. It's been several years since I have climbed it so there were some doubts in my mind on whether or not I could climb it on the Trek. The tough part about the Caves road is the fact that it isn't terraced like most of the other climbs in the area. That means no places to get a little bit of a rest.
The ride over was into a stiff cool breeze so when I got there I was still a bit chilled. I decided to ride it without going into my lowest gear so my quads would get a good power workout. I have done that climb many times but I found myself cursing on the way up because there is simply no place where you can ease up. Near the top my speed was down to 7 kph which is damn slow.
The results were what I should have expected. It took 17 minutes for the climb so that's nowhere near my best time which was slightly under 15 minutes on a mountain bike. I think if I had gone up in my lowest gear my time would have been possibly 1 minute less because there's no doubt in my mind that I would be faster. My reason for thinking that is I really couldn't have pushed much harder on the pedals and because of that the surprising stat is my heart rate going up the caves averaged at only 153 bpm. On my ride last week my average heart rate for over 3 hours was 160. I think a higher cadence climb in my lowest gear would have been faster and I would have been able to work harder and more efficiently and therefore gotten to the top faster and with a slightly higher heart rate. Maybe the fact that I had a tough time staying warm had something to do with it as well.
The rest of the ride was all rolling hills to Ravenna where I turned south to Grey 19 and then made wicked time on the way back because of the wind at my back. The ride took 1 hr 45 mins with a heart rate average of 138 and a max of only 165. The distance was 42.3 km and I hit 75 kph coming down Grey 19 so all in all it was a pretty good ride. I'm glad I went out even if I did miss the F1 race in Montreal because it's always better to be out doing something than sitting at home watching someone else do something.
I did something stupid on the ride as well. At the lookout just past the Scenic caves I saw a friend and stopped for a couple of minutes to chat. When I started up again I was in a big gear and instead of downshifting I just stood and tried to get the pedals turning. That was a mistake. I tweaked my knee and although there is no pain every time I sit down there is a small click so lesson learned. Don't push real big gears.