There are 21 metres of descent in this entire route. Twenty-one. Everything else goes up, or waits.

The waiting comes first: eight kilometres out of Huma along the Amur valley, flat enough to barely notice the road rising beneath you. It's a long, deceptive neutral zone in the far north of Heilongjiang, where the forest closes in and the Russian border runs just off your right shoulder.

Then the road turns into the trees and starts climbing, and it doesn't stop. Nearly four kilometres at 3%, stiffening through the middle to a kilometre at 4.3% and a 5.3% ramp at km 11. There's no summit to crest and recover on, no run-in to the finish — the line is at the top, 299 metres up.