WhiteGiant
Maximum Pace
- Nov 4, 2006
- 1,233
- 395
Tuesday, April 29, is a National Holiday in Japan, and I was planning to spend a nice quiet day riding gently up & down Edogawa… It was not to be.
The day before (Monday), Mike called me asking if I had any plans for a "long, mountainous" ride. I said no, but that he should contact Thomas, Deej, Philip or Christoph to see if anything was happening.
That night though, my Edogawa-riding-partner informed me that she wasn't feeling well, and that if I "wanted to go riding with the big-boys", I should do so!
I called Thomas, and found out that he was planning a "KT5" re-run with Philip.
*Note: It was on the original KT5 that Philip had his crash, and broke his last bike. He has recently bought a beautiful new Cervello, and this would be his second long ride on it.
------------------------------------
I left home just after 5am, expecting the 27km journey to "Kamiuma" (The intersection of Rte.246 & Kannana-dori) to take nearly an hour & a half – With the lack of traffic though, I made it there in 59mins… ave.spd. on the meter: 29.8km/h).
I had time for an ice-cream & apple pie while I waited for Thomas and Philip.
The 3 of us rode down R246 towards Atsugi (42km away) at 6:30 – non-stop – and arrived there just after 7:45. Really quick! We expected to meet Mike there, but then Thomas noticed a voice-message on his phone to say that Mike would be doing a different ride with his friend. So it would just be us three, and we rolled out of Atsugi right on 8:00.
"SPOKE-en for": As we headed down Rte.246 to the Rte.710-turn-off, there's a long climb to the first tunnel. Philip was first through, then myself and we waited…. and waited… for Thomas. What happened???
Puncture? Heaven forbid, he'd broken his chain again? NO! This time, Thomas came limping down the hill with "a broken spoke"! We discussed whether Thomas would be able to continue the ride like that, but even with only one spoke gone, his wheel was so far out of alignment that it was rubbing against his brake & rear stay. Thomas would have to catch the train home from there, (Hadano station) about 2km away.
Philip & I didn't want to let that unfortunate incident get us down, so we (now just the two of us) continued on the originally proposed ride.
We had a short break at the 7-11 on the corner of Rte.710, and made it to the top of the first climb by 10:30. We went down for a kilometre from there, until it goes UP again for another 3km (to where Phil punctured on the first KT5 ride), and then straight down to the Tanzawa-ko lakeside.
With no-one else to stop for, we continued along Rte.76 down to Rte.246, and then to the 7-11 just before the "Mikuni-toge" climb on Rte.147.
*Note: We were at that 7-11 by 11:30, and our goal of being at the top of Mikuni-toge by 1pm finally looked do-able!
Almost…
Philip arrived at 1:05, with me 4 minutes behind at 1:09-ish.
>Deej: Just thought you'd like to know; from the turn-off, it took me 48mins (as opposed to 41mins last time) – But I already had 120km on the clock before the start of the climb, so…. Anyway, just making excuses! T
We were both at the 7-11 (Yamanaka-ko lakeside) soon after that, and we rolled out from there at 14:00 – Two hours earlier than last time! And then we had the infamous Rte.413 downhill to look forward to…
Absolutely AWESOME… As usual! With over 20km completely downhill, we were both flying! And in keeping with the team-spirit, we took turns at the front pulling each other for 4-5km a piece to keep the speed up all the way to Hashimoto – almost non-stop for 50km (only one short brake to take off our windbreakers when it got warmer).
We arrived at Hashimoto (7-11) at 3:40, and had what would be our last break.
We set out from there at 4:00, and rode along Rte.16, thence to Rte.246, and straight back towards Shibuya. The traffic-weaving skills went into full effect, and we made it back to "Kamiuma", where we'd set out from 11 hours earlier, at 17:30.
Amazing! Philip would've had over 210km on the meter by the time he got home, and had done that in exactly 11 hours.
For me, I got home a little after 7pm (I took my time after saying good-bye to Philip), but had clocked up 261km for the day, with an average of 25.8km/h.
*Personal best: On the R413 downhill, I hit my fastest ever speed of 73.1km/h… whilst being chased by about 6 guys on motorbikes!
That was really hard! But…invigorating.
Big THANKS to Philip, who had been off the bike for over a month, for coming out on this ride – AND who beat me to the top of every climb!
And to Thomas: Hope you get your wheel (spoke) fixed soon! Or better than that, get some stronger wheels, perhaps.
Great day!
Travis
Pic: Broken spoke... Don't know why Thomas is smiling...
https://tokyocycle.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/2540
The day before (Monday), Mike called me asking if I had any plans for a "long, mountainous" ride. I said no, but that he should contact Thomas, Deej, Philip or Christoph to see if anything was happening.
That night though, my Edogawa-riding-partner informed me that she wasn't feeling well, and that if I "wanted to go riding with the big-boys", I should do so!
I called Thomas, and found out that he was planning a "KT5" re-run with Philip.
*Note: It was on the original KT5 that Philip had his crash, and broke his last bike. He has recently bought a beautiful new Cervello, and this would be his second long ride on it.
------------------------------------
I left home just after 5am, expecting the 27km journey to "Kamiuma" (The intersection of Rte.246 & Kannana-dori) to take nearly an hour & a half – With the lack of traffic though, I made it there in 59mins… ave.spd. on the meter: 29.8km/h).
I had time for an ice-cream & apple pie while I waited for Thomas and Philip.
The 3 of us rode down R246 towards Atsugi (42km away) at 6:30 – non-stop – and arrived there just after 7:45. Really quick! We expected to meet Mike there, but then Thomas noticed a voice-message on his phone to say that Mike would be doing a different ride with his friend. So it would just be us three, and we rolled out of Atsugi right on 8:00.
"SPOKE-en for": As we headed down Rte.246 to the Rte.710-turn-off, there's a long climb to the first tunnel. Philip was first through, then myself and we waited…. and waited… for Thomas. What happened???
Puncture? Heaven forbid, he'd broken his chain again? NO! This time, Thomas came limping down the hill with "a broken spoke"! We discussed whether Thomas would be able to continue the ride like that, but even with only one spoke gone, his wheel was so far out of alignment that it was rubbing against his brake & rear stay. Thomas would have to catch the train home from there, (Hadano station) about 2km away.
Philip & I didn't want to let that unfortunate incident get us down, so we (now just the two of us) continued on the originally proposed ride.
We had a short break at the 7-11 on the corner of Rte.710, and made it to the top of the first climb by 10:30. We went down for a kilometre from there, until it goes UP again for another 3km (to where Phil punctured on the first KT5 ride), and then straight down to the Tanzawa-ko lakeside.
With no-one else to stop for, we continued along Rte.76 down to Rte.246, and then to the 7-11 just before the "Mikuni-toge" climb on Rte.147.
*Note: We were at that 7-11 by 11:30, and our goal of being at the top of Mikuni-toge by 1pm finally looked do-able!
Almost…
Philip arrived at 1:05, with me 4 minutes behind at 1:09-ish.
>Deej: Just thought you'd like to know; from the turn-off, it took me 48mins (as opposed to 41mins last time) – But I already had 120km on the clock before the start of the climb, so…. Anyway, just making excuses! T
We were both at the 7-11 (Yamanaka-ko lakeside) soon after that, and we rolled out from there at 14:00 – Two hours earlier than last time! And then we had the infamous Rte.413 downhill to look forward to…
Absolutely AWESOME… As usual! With over 20km completely downhill, we were both flying! And in keeping with the team-spirit, we took turns at the front pulling each other for 4-5km a piece to keep the speed up all the way to Hashimoto – almost non-stop for 50km (only one short brake to take off our windbreakers when it got warmer).
We arrived at Hashimoto (7-11) at 3:40, and had what would be our last break.
We set out from there at 4:00, and rode along Rte.16, thence to Rte.246, and straight back towards Shibuya. The traffic-weaving skills went into full effect, and we made it back to "Kamiuma", where we'd set out from 11 hours earlier, at 17:30.
Amazing! Philip would've had over 210km on the meter by the time he got home, and had done that in exactly 11 hours.
For me, I got home a little after 7pm (I took my time after saying good-bye to Philip), but had clocked up 261km for the day, with an average of 25.8km/h.
*Personal best: On the R413 downhill, I hit my fastest ever speed of 73.1km/h… whilst being chased by about 6 guys on motorbikes!
That was really hard! But…invigorating.
Big THANKS to Philip, who had been off the bike for over a month, for coming out on this ride – AND who beat me to the top of every climb!
And to Thomas: Hope you get your wheel (spoke) fixed soon! Or better than that, get some stronger wheels, perhaps.
Great day!
Travis
Pic: Broken spoke... Don't know why Thomas is smiling...
https://tokyocycle.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/2540
