Wednesday 6 February 2013

125km of unplanned pain (and fun, honestly)


Two or three of us will often ride on Tuesday mornings now, but this week, somehow seven of us ended up coming out bright and early.

Two of the group did only the regular morning loop (about 30km) because of time constraints, three more continued to do about 90km total and myself and Ryo carried on and both did around 125km, presumably because we're stupid.

Really nice ride in surprisingly warm and clear winter weather. And really great to have such a large group, especially so early in the morning (we met at 8am)! Super route too.

Definitely feeling it in my legs today, though...



The whole motley crew...
Left to right: Grecia, Alex (back), Ryo (front), Adriano, Cory, Rafael, me
Bashing along the climb of the morning loop
Cruising along the Rainbow Bridge
Hunkering down into the drops to get through the headwind along south Biwa lake

Kansai Cyclocross 2013

Took a nice run out on Sunday to see a real live cyclocross race. Cyclocross is basically a middle ground between mountain and road biking, with lots of mud and obstacles on a circuit raced for several laps (in this case, for about 40 minutes).

Two of my friends were competing in the Masters 1 category so we took a little group ride down to support them.



We then followed that up with a run into the mountains in the north - in particular to Kurama, one of my favourite little climbs. I tried for the Strava 'King Of The Mountain' record there... and managed 2nd place. Still 17 seconds off the leader and I absolutely hammered it. Next time...!

CX is an odd sport...

At the top of the climb to Kurama-dera temple.