Wednesday 14 November 2012

Gearing up for a Challenge

The Strava BMC 79mi Challenge is coming up this weekend, 'challenging' me to ride 79mi (about 125km) within a 24 hour period. On a geared bike this would be easy. On a fixed gear, probably not so much. I forsee much pain.

The route I've planned will take me up to Takao (with a group of friends) for some momiji (autumn leaves) viewing, then back down and along the rivers to Kizu and then back to Kyoto (the route I took when I was hit by that Prius last time). In other words, it starts off with a nice long Cat 4 hill climb, then provides about 90 km of flat terrain which I should be able to drag myself along no matter what, even if it gets dark before I finish (it probably will). I think one or two people will be joining me for the entire ride - Grecia and Cory, probably - but they'll be on geared road bikes so I'm sure they'll be laughing at my condition towards the end. Oh well, company is company, I guess...

Since I'm supposed to be leading this group to Takao on Sunday, I rode it alone yesterday to check it out, after an early morning run up to Ohara (this is becoming a regular thing now, and I'm worried that I may be in danger of becoming a 'morning person'...). Mainly to see if most of the rest of the group can make it, to be honest. Strava log below.





The hill to/from Takao is steep! In fact the return journey back out of the valley begins with a kilometre of 8.2% average grade, which is nasty with only one gear. Still, a beautiful ride and the scenery when you get into Takao is incredible at this time of year. I went to check out Saimyo-ji temple but saved the rest for Sunday.

It's stuff like this that makes the pain and suffering of climbing hills so entirely worthwhile...








Incredible!

More to come after Sunday, hopefully... although I can't guarantee I'll have any energy left to update this blog when I get back!

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