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Ride Sun Jan 11th - Shinen-megalo-brevet-kai

If you want to trial ride with my teammate, please tell me.
Yes, please.
I'd love to join you guys for a ride.
However, after I get my riding kit (clothes) which will be from early February.
I should also have my position sorted on my bike by then with a 130mm stem and a 30mm setback seat pillar.
;)
 
Another successful megalo brevet in the bag!

I had caught the flu leading up to the ride and was not sure if I was going to be able to make it. But I went for a spin the day before and decided to abort my antibiotics and repair myself with cycling!

Started early and met Mpeek at the spaceship, the temp wasn't too bad and we set off at a leisurely pace towards kasai. Picking up travis and then Heath as we got down the river. Once we turned onto edogawa we met a headwind that grew as the kms clicked over. My form was abysmal and I found myself at the back sheltering, a place i would assume for most of the ride. I had never ridden on this river so it was nice to see some new territory. The river has some nice sections and as you get up to the tone river it is nice and wide and quite deserted. The wind kept growing, I kept hiding.

We stopped a few times for conini snacks and were just riding a very relaxed pace. Just before we split from the tone to head towards Arakawa we ran into yoshinori who joined us for the next bit of the ride. A few weeks I had spotted a photo on @Musashi13 s feed of a particularly delicious burger right in the zone we were heading so we navigated to the furtherest point of his ride and found mad burger. Where we scoffed down some delicious burgers, fries and coffees. I could have stayed there but apparently we had to ride home. All lunch we had been talking about how from here it was going to be easy as the headwind we had ridden into was now over and it was tailwind time. How wrong we were... Over the course of lunch the wind had swung around, and we were now greeted with a headwind heading down the Arakawa... Unnecessary.
Mpeek assumed wind duty and I assumed my "making sure noone fell off the back" position. Actually I felt a bunch better after lunch and it was a pretty decent run home.

Overall a great day! I had wanted to do this ride for a few years. The constant headwind, my condition, and the fact that you are in the same riding position for a long time made it a fairly tough day. But no complaints. A great riding crew and a good day!

Hopefully some more people can make it out for the next one!

Big thanks to Mister Peek for taking far far more than his share at the front, and still finding the energy after we split to do a bunch of laps on the Saiko course..... Freak!

For anyone interested in the route....


Oh and this 2015 awards BS on strava is stupid. Look 56 trophies for my trophy room, and I swear I never got over 30km/hr all day.... absurd.
 
Nice write up Ant. I had a blast and, it seems, I had the form too so I was happy to tackle the headwinds while Ant hid like a big girls blouse at the back. Nice to meet @WhiteGiant for the first time and great to catch up with @Heath and Sexy Yoshinori again. Thanks for the company guys! Looking forward to the next one!
 
Sorry, this is long.

As I hadn't experienced much early morning winter riding in Japan, I headed off from my house in Kamagaya wearing fairly thin gloves to meet the group on the east side of the Arakawa near Route 14.
After the first kilometer, I quickly realized that I had miscalculated the cooler temps as my hands had become numb.
I decided the only way to fix this was to turn up the pace to heat my body.
That worked well, and I arrived nice and toasty at the, 'assumed' rendezvous point, blissfully unaware that I'd cracked into 8th place on a 'Route 14 East West' Strava segment at a meager 34.6 km/h.

A pleasant 20 minute break/wait was followed by a subsequent phone call from The Blob. Something along the lines of, "Hi mate. Where are ya?"
I was then enlightened on what was actually considered the 'real' east side of the river by the boys, the middle section.
I quickly hooked up with the group and we were on our way.

We were guided beautifully through the rather confusing Kasai Rinkai Koen by The White Giant, who later up the Edogawa River, took out the best "Toorimaaasu!" calling award, mainly toward old people wandering aimlessly on the path (as they do).
Such perfect intonation and volume had people turning quickly with shocked looks on their faces.

We weren't sure why they were shocked, but we came to the conclusion that they were thinking something along these lines (which one, we will never know):
1. How dare you "Toorimasu!" me, because I am old, and as such have the right to endlessly hinder people 24/7.
2. How dare you,"Toorimasu!" me at all!
3. Gaijin da!
4. I think I just peed my pants.

As we passed by, we were very careful to leave a good gaijin impression on them by politely excusing ourselves in Japanese.


The White Giant and I led most of the way up the Edogawa with The Blob (a.k.a. Sick Boy) in tail who was doing a great job of pushing his sickness induced, energy sapped body.
We were smarting at how we'd only have to ride against a fairly light wind northward, then get a beautiful tailwind home. How wrong we were!

Toward the end of the Edogawa, suddenly, a dark figure appeared in our peripheral vision and subsequently rolled past us!
It was the Peek-Meister (a.k.a Steve Austin) who unbeknown to us at that time, had come to the front to take over control with a 120 kilometer-plus turn of pace into a constant headwind!

During a convenience store stop down the road from Sekiyado Castle, we were entertained with a fantastic 'hunger flat' story about The Blob.
Apparently, one day, he 'hit the wall' on a long ride and went hunger flat.
After licking all of his food wrappers clean that he'd earlier discarded in his back pocket, he received half a Power Bar from Mlac Peek.
Still not satisfied and slumping further into the abyss, he proceeded riding.
Upon passing a pig farm and being endowed with the pungent smell of the feed trough, he turned to Mlac Peek and mentioned that he'd love to just run over to that feed trough, bury his head in it, and munch it all down!!!

The ride continued with us still smirking over that very entertaining story.
As Mlac Peek's (The Bionic Man's) turn of pace continued clocking away, a bit of murmuring started at the back.
Some suggested that Mlac Peek had morphed into being a keirin pace-bike and would later return back to his bionic human form.
That theory was challenged upon closer inspection and proved wrong, because he was visually and technically still in the form of a human.
We gladly conceded that he must have had his bionic parts secretly tuned and overhauled at a local, secret laboratory during the week and had switched them onto auto-pilot.

The rest of the ride basically proceeded as was written in The Blob's summary of the ride.

Many thanks to @Musashi13 for putting us onto the burger shop called 'Mad Burger'. Truth is, I could have eaten 3.

Toward the end of the ride, after having left Sick Boy and Steve Austin, The White Giant and I were approaching our departure point.
He enlightened me to the fact that he had a nice, cold choccy milk waiting for him in the fridge at home and was going to devour it with aplomb as soon as he got back!!!
Oh no, I thought, I'm so hungry and now I have to think about you smashing that down while I'm on the slog home.
The White Giant put me onto a great route home and we said good-bye.
Then, I realized that I still had a couple of Snicker Bars in my jersey pocket, I smashed them down, and returned home very quickly via The White Giant's suggested route...happily.

Mlac Peek - Thanks for the tow.
The Blob - Full respect for a great show of persistence against sickness.
The White Giant - Great to meet you for the first time. Look forward to riding with you again!

The End.

(Phew!)

On my cyclo-computer I ended up with:
222 km @28.7 km/h average
7h 45m ride time
Left just before dawn and arrived back just before dusk....PERFECT!
 
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Sorry I couldn't make it lads. I managed a half marathon and for the first time in a week, I didn't have any emergency toilet needs halfway through so things are looking up ;)

Hope to ride with you all soon.
 
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