Century #2

Rode my second century today. I had to lead this one as a group ride, which was... rather exasperating, actually. My brain is FRIED right now.

Meeting at 7am...

Desperate lunching at the1/2 way mark.

Got home and immediately consumed a huge bowl of rice with beef, which I ate so fast I honest to god nearly puked right back up. I don't think I have ever been so hungry in my life.

The Strava track has me about 5km short because my phone died before the end, but I assure you, it was a true century - 100 miles (~163km)!

I now have a couple of days in which to manage another 185km if I want to finish the Specialized challenge. I'm thinking a rest/work day tomorrow and something truly epic on Tuesday, but we'll have to see about that...

Cake & Flies

Rode out to Kizugawa again today, because my front derailleur is messing up and I needed something flat, but it was too good a day to not ride somewhere.




Things to note:

1) Cake is still the greatest mid-ride nutrition. Today's featured a very seasonal strawberry (equivalent in value to gold in Japan).

2) Riding 35km with a small stinging insect in your baselayer is NOT fun. At all.

Have you seen this parson?

Nothing to do with cycling (although many people like to go to hot-springs or public baths after cycling), but a friend just took this at a public bath and I thought it was funny enough to share.

Many yakuza (mafia) members in Japan have tattoos, so they're often prohibited in such places. But this is without a doubt some of the worst 'English' I've yet seen here.

Kuta Loop

The Strava Specialized challenge continues. I've fallen behind this past week, due to work, poor weather and a tooth issue (that actually seems to have cleared itself up - fingers crossed!). I'm gonna have to pull out all the stops to finish this one - 520km in a week. Let's see what I can do!

A week or so ago I got a cracking ride in, though. I'd been holding off writing it up because I was hoping to have video footage (a friend lent me his GoPro bike-mountable camera) to go with it, but the editing is taking forever so I'll post that up separately in a little while.



We started off with an ascent of Hanase Omote, which was far better this time around - no-one stopped for a breather midway up it! - and then, after catching our breaths at the top, a cracking descent down the other side (Hanase Touge). From there, after some minor navigational issues, we carried on north and eventually east to the village of Kuta, up over another decent climb. This area was beautiful and there were still some cherry blossoms around - long gone in Kyoto!

Of note is that I managed to get a KOM (King of the Mountain) on a climb here. Awesome! Granted, a friend of mine stole it less than a day later, but that's just how it goes I guess. I will have my revenge some day...

From Kuta we continued to Route 367 towards Ohara, which is a rather rolling road with some nasty tunnels (we actually dismounted and walked through one of them), all full of trucks. However, it pays off eventually, with an absolutely ripping descent a few miles before entering Ohara. Super-smooth, fresh road surface and a nice event gradient make for a very, very fast ride. It's over in 4-5 minutes, but it's pretty amazing. I got this all on video so hopefully you'll be able to enjoy that soon. I believe I hit over 80kmph (50mph) on this - quite scary on only a pair of 23mm wide tyres!

A few highlights, courtesy of Christoph:

The group, at a stop on the climb up to Kurama

Riding through the village of Hanase (left: Grecia; right: me)

The village of Kuta

Smile for the camera!

Of course, this all sounds too perfect, so at the bottom of that descent I noticed a sort of rhythmic thumping sensation coming from my rear tyre. Why? Because there was a HUGE bulge in it. Pretty much a total tyre failure. I swapped tubes to see if that would help, but it blew out almost immediately, so I rode part of the way and walked the rest to Ohara. Ride over.

Tyre issues - note the bulge on the left side

The bulge itself

I'm seriously lucky that the tyre didn't blow out completely at 50mph+...

Anyway, the result was a very costly taxi ride home (and try finding a taxi that will also carry a bike!) plus a pair of new tyres and tubes. Not fun at all...

Following up from that, I actually contacted the tyre manufacturer in Italy and they had their Japanese distributer send me a new pair by means of apology, which arrived the other day. So now I have ANOTHER new set! They're pretty expensive racing tyres so I'll definitely hold them in reserve for when my current ones wear out. I'm not convinced the tyre was at fault that much - they had over 3500km on them by the time the rear one failed (and the rear one always wears much faster than the front), which is probably well past the reasonable lifetime of racing open tubulars. Regardless, props to Challenge for sorting that out incredibly quickly.

All in all, though, a pretty beautiful route, with a little excitement thrown in for good measure. I will upload the video shortly(ish), so keep an eye out for that!

Oh, one more note: it's absolutely AMAZING what this sort of mileage will do for you physically. I went for my annual university health check today and without going into details, the results were pretty remarkable. So many benefits for what feels like no effort whatsoever.

The finer things in life

Sometimes, no matter how bad an idea it obviously is, you just have to stop in the middle of an 85km ride to wolf down a huge American breakfast with some good friends... and then keep riding...

Tour de Kyoto

Strange ride today - a little disjointed, a little contrived, but great 'fun'. For some reason I decided it would be fun to knock off literally each and every climb in northern Kyoto, starting in the east and heading west. In order, they were to be (with climb categories):

• Hieizan (to Hieizan Driveway toll road gate) (Cat 2)
• Ohara & Ebumi Pass East (Cat 3)
• Kurama (Cat 4)
• Kibune (Cat 4)
• Kumogahata & Mochikoshi Pass East (Cat 3)
• Kyoumi Touge (Cat 3)
• Takao (Cat 4)

I guess technically you'd want to include Ebumi Pass West instead/as well, but the route wouldn't be quite so neat. Maybe I'll try that for round 2! I also didn't elect to take the Kurama road all the way up to Hanase Omote because, well, I'm not COMPLETELY insane. Just mostly...

Elevation profile along total distance of ride, with labels showing climbs undertaken.
Note absence of Takao (read on for explanation).

Things started off nicely. The weather was a little brisk but stable, with some sun even making an appearance. I set off in a long-sleeve baselayer and a summer jersey, shorts and half-finger gloves, with a windproof gilet in my pocket. Great.

I first attacked Hieizan with Alex (on his new bike), which went great. We made awesome time and I managed a new Personal Record on the climb - I'm still at 2nd on the leaderboard for the segment but I improved my time by over a minute! Some day I will be King Of The Mountain! Alex came in just behind me in 3rd overall. Very impressive.

Alex then split off and left me to tackle the rest on my own. I headed for Ohara and then Ebumi East, where the wind picked up, making the descent a little interesting, but not too bad. Halfway up to Kurama it began to rain on and off, and this continued for the majority of the day. Generally it wasn't too bad - I just had to take some descent sections a little easy with wet rims and road surface.

After Kurama and then Kibune (they're branches of the same road), I hit Kumogahata and the fearsomely steep Mochikoshi Pass East... where I somehow got another Personal Record. How I managed it at this stage of the day I don't know, especially since a torrential downpour began as I started the climb, making it an even more miserable grind than usual.

Next up was Kyoumi Touge, a long climb of moderate steepness with some pretty steep little sections. It's a wearing climb, but very pretty. I was admittedly pretty shot by this point, and my time suffered - I was something like 3 minutes off my best. Still, I plugged away and got up it, and sat down at the top to enjoy my hard-earned Snickers... when an absolutely massive rainstorm hit. I was soaked in seconds, my windproof gilet no defence against such rain. Desperate to get down, I endured a freezing descent, as the wind whipped the water off my waterlogged skin. The descent was 'eventful' and by the time I reached the bottom I had lost all feeling in my extremities - not ideal when you need to use brake levers!

At this point I only had one more climb to go - Takao - but the weather was so bad that I elected to sack it off and go home. I didn't have the right clothing to ride in those conditions and I was getting really cold. I think you have to know your limits.

It's a shame I couldn't complete my little challenge, but I'm still very happy with what I achieved: according to Strava, around 95km total distance and 3150m total climbing. Not a bad way to spend a few hours!

Channeling Cancellara

Some day I will ride the Paris-Roubaix route. That's a little dream of mine.

Until then, there's always the cobbles in Kyoto's temple complexes. What better way to celebrate Cancellera's absolutely stunning win at Paris-Roubaix on Sunday?

Cobbles are torture, by the way...

Spring is here!

21% grade?

Ouch.

Running out of sun cream on a surprise 27 Celcius day?

Definitely ouch.

Riding under the cherry blossoms in gorgeous spring sunshine?

Makes it all worthwhile!

Big thumbs up for spring!

April Fools! (or: Sweet Jesus, my legs are on fire)

Today marks the beginning of the Specialized Spring Classics Challenge on Strava, which sets me the challenge of riding about 330km per week for 4 weeks running. With such a huge challenge laying ahead, it was time to pull out all the stops and greet April in style!

So, April Fools, indeed... an apt description of the four of us - Cory, Ross, Grecia and myself - who set off on this route in the spring sunshine today...

A ridiculous amount of climbing - including first over Kyomi Touge (3.3km, 267m, 8.1%, Cat3), then Kurio Pass South (1.3km, 84m, 5.9%, Cat4 - with a truly stunning descent!), then up and over the beast that is Hanase Touge (8.6km, 368m, 4.3%, Cat2). Hanase Touge is the back side of Hanase - the terrifying Hanase Omote (see my last ride) runs up the other side and the two climbs meet at the top. Thankfully it's a lot better from the back, but still a long climb.

After cresting Hanase we took Route 477 across to Ohara. That was certainly interesting! A sudden ramp of what is apparently something like 12% for over a kilometre, on what are frankly roads not fit for a road bike. I was 'unlucky' and got a full-on cramp in my calf here, forcing me to get off and walk it out from the about the 1/3 mark. Even walking up it was horrible! Kudos to Ross and Cory who, I think, managed to ride the whole thing - rumour has it that's the single worst climb in Kyoto.

Coming down the back side of that was also 'fun'. A descent so steep and so long, on such shitty roads, that I managed to heat up my rims so much from braking that I got a flat tyre. There's no sign of road debris or a snakebite (pinch flat) but there is a substantial split in the tube near the brake track. Nothing to damage it on the inside, burrs and such. I can only assume my poor rims just couldn't dissipate enough heat and eventually the tube popped through increased pressure. Amazing.

Fixing the flat, in the only photo from today - thanks a lot, Cory!

After switching out the tube we continued on down to Ohara and then back to Kyoto (we absolutely ripped it down that descent - average 40km/h and I apparently hit 84km/h (52mph) at one point, which I can totally believe), where I promptly demolished a substantial rice bowl with beef and then passed out before I could even take a shower. Whoops.

Tomorrow it will rain. After a total of 110km and nearly 3500m elevation gain... frankly I'll be glad of the rest!