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Sunday April 29th Long Ride from Chiba (Inage/Mihama)

Doug3

Maximum Pace
Jun 24, 2010
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I am going to do the Mt. Tsukuba ride, departing from JR Inage station at 6am.
 
I rode from Inage, Chiba out to Tsukuba-san, and back. Pancake flat until getting to the base of Mt. Tsukuba. The first part was along the Hanamigawa Cycling course, which is being upgraded, and was nice in some sections, but a little rough in others. At least no traffic.

Next I basically rode up Rt. 4 and then Rt. 48 to Tsuchiura. A lot of the road is 4 lane with a decent shoulder, and there did not seem to be a lot of traffic. From Tsuchiura, there is a nice wide cycling course that runs about 15-20km out to Tsukuba-san. There were a lot of cyclists starting out from Tsuchiura station.

I was not sure of the best route up Tsukuba-san, so I just tried one, then went down the other side and explored around a bit. The roads were becoming crowded with tourists around 9:30am on the south-west side, but the eastern side seemed to be pretty much free of traffic.

The sunny weather was almost too hot, especially around 2pm with about 40km to go to get back. My pace dropped off quite a bit, and I struggled a bit. Need to work a bit more on my pacing and nutrition before TOITO in a couple of weeks.

Overall, it was a good ride, and I would definitely be interested in exploring around there again sometime. 200km and ~1800m climbing.
 
To be honest you should be training how you race - therefore I would suggest riding out along route 20 to sasago pass turn around at the top and come back. This will be pretty much like riding the actually course as its pretty much rolling terrain with some climbs.
 
To be honest you should be training how you race - therefore I would suggest riding out along route 20 to sasago pass turn around at the top and come back. This will be pretty much like riding the actually course as its pretty much rolling terrain with some climbs.

Agreed. I was just stuck in Chiba for family duties and had to organize a ride from there, and was not so familiar with the territory.

On Friday however, I might get the family to camp in Yamanashi near the start of the course, and actually ride up and back over the first half of the course.
 
I'm pretty much going along these lines. I need active recovery and some saddle time to get my muscles reloaded. This is a good ride and a no brainer for the route.

To be honest you should be training how you race - therefore I would suggest riding out along route 20 to sasago pass turn around at the top and come back. This will be pretty much like riding the actually course as its pretty much rolling terrain with some climbs.
 
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