Saturday 29 December 2012

Strava Rapha Festive 500






502km between 24th and 29th, during which 26th was a complete rest day, including some good climbing and some horrendous weather.

I am in a whole world of pain right now. And it feels great.

More soon!

Tuesday 25 December 2012

Rapha Continental: Assynt

Merry Christmas, everyone!

With the Rapha Festive 500 challenge underway (more on that later), I just wanted to showcase a gorgeous piece of cycling filmmaking from the folks at Rapha Continental.

This literally captures everything I love about cycling in 5 minutes. I highly recommend watching in HD and fullscreen for the full effect.



The Rapha Continental: Assynt from RAPHA on Vimeo.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Gearing up (Hieizan Cat 2)

After a week or so of rides that had to be cut short due to ice on the road (including one particularly hairy descent from Kumogahata last Sunday), we seem to be enjoying a brief period of warm weather (double figures!) which means an excuse to get back into the hills rather than sticking to flat routes...

Cycling in early morning snow on Tuesday morning!

This weekend's group ride took us up Hieizan - a Category 2 climb with an average 5.1% grade over about 7 km for a total of about 350 m elevation gain - then back to Kyoto via Otsu and Yamashina (and two more Cat 4 climbs, naturally). Cracking ride and it was so warm I didn't even need leg warmers (did go with good ol' embrocation, though)!




Quick shot next to a bizarrely made-up tanuki statue in Otsu, after the descent from Hieizan

Of note was that this was my first time on a geared bike since, well, I don't know. But I've been riding solely fixed for a year now. Climbing on fixed has given me wicked sprinting power but apparently absolutely awful endurance on longer climbs. I was truly dying halfway up this Cat 2. Definitely something to work on...

Saturday 8 December 2012

A challenge appears!

Time for a new Strava challenge...



























Ride 500 km across an 8 day period that includes Christmas - how hard can it be?

Probably very, but I'm up for a challenge!

Monday 3 December 2012

Kizugawa group ride

With my knee slowly recovering from whatever I did to it during the BMC challenge, this Sunday proved a good opportunity to brush off the cobwebs a little and put in some nice 'easy' flat miles.

With snow beginning to fall in the hills and my knee still not in good enough shape to take them on anyway, we made the decision to run a long, flat ride to Kizugawa and back. It's a ride I'm quite familiar with now - it's where I got hit by that Prius and it was 75% of the BMC challenge - but it's nice nonetheless.

Our little peloton.
Left to right: Grecia, me, Cory, Jamie, Kory, Ross

I definitely felt it in my legs - I was beginning to ache pretty hard with about 20 km left to go. It's amazing what 2 weeks more or less off your bike will do to you. Hopefully it'll come back soon, since we have some great things planned for the first half of next year.