What's new

Tour Planning for Kyushuu Trip

Malte

Maximum Pace
Sep 26, 2011
496
54
Hello,

I want to pick your brain on something ...
I have some days (actually 3 full days) over golden week to tour through Kyushuu before meeting up with my family.

What would be a good km/climb goal per day for sportive touring, assuming 12h on the road including lunch and small sightseeing?

When doing single day touring I plan for ~200km/3000m. From your experience, how much should I adjust this for multiple days (assuming I carry a small/minimal backpack)?

Cheers,
Malte
 
Where in Kyushu will you be staying?

First, read up Travis' legendary account of Japan down yonder.

Not Kyushu-related, but as for multiple-day sportive touring check out some of the rides Serguei and I did in the past:

Tour de Tohoku II
Tour d'Echoline
Tour de Hokurikudo
Mountains of Madness
Tour de Kii

Mind that they were meant to be recreational, not testosterone-drenched hammerfests. :)

Thanks Thomas. I will arrive in Miyazaki and want to go down the coastline (best until the most south point but it depends how ambitious I want to be). Then riding up Kagoshima Bay until Kirishima and then up through the mountains until Aso where I am going to meet my family.

Start and End Date is fixed (3 full days). If I go to all the places on my wish list it will be 200km/2900m a day :(. Simplest way to shortcut is to skip Cape Sata in the south (then below 150km/2100m/day). Not sure how worth it is? No other TCC'ler involved so no hammerfest :angel:.
 
Another good cycling route reference is the book 'CYCLING JAPAN by Takashi Niwa: 10 of the Best Rides'. I did the Kyushu leg couple of years ago. The route starts from Beppu -> Aso -> Nobeoka. However, I took the reverse leg and started from Miyazaki and on a fully loaded touring bike. [As a side note, I felt that the slope between 143-144km marker is steeper than Kazahari]

See the following for reference.

http://app.strava.com/activities/5502236#
 
Thanks everybody for the links. I booked to the hotel and now I just need to ride. Hope the weather will be fine. I will use the Shinkansen in between to bridge some of the mountains because they are impossible to pass in one day. Here is the current plan.

Day1: Myazaki to Kanoya
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/76817338/ (147km, 1050m)

Day2: Kanoya to Kagoshima
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/76829552/ (167km, 1700m)

Day3: Yatsushiro (go there by Shinkansen) to Aso
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/76802832/ (156km, 3000m)
 
Thanks for sharing and have a good trip. Would be great if you manage to write a report afterwards
 
If you`re unsure what is an sustainable amount of cycling, you could use TSS to profile the route and give an indication of the load on the system and pacing needed to keep within the realms of possibility.
 
If you`re unsure what is an sustainable amount of cycling, you could use TSS to profile the route and give an indication of the load on the system and pacing needed to keep within the realms of possibility.

How to know the Training Stress Score of a ride before the actual ride?
 
Hang on the TSS is worked out using duration, intensity, and relative intensity so there is absolutely no way you can work out the TSS before you have riden the course:


TSS (Training Stress Score) is an incredibly useful tool for a coach or an athlete. It allows us to quantify how much stress a particular workout was to the body. We can then use that information to structure the next set of workouts. It is a combination of a workout's duration, intensity, and relative intensity. The duration is, of course, the length of the workout, the intensity is the raw output (power in watts or run pace). The relative intensity is measured using an Intensity Factor (IF),which represents how intense a ride was relative to your FTP (Functional Threshold Power/Pace, or the average power an athlete can maintain for approximately 30 minutes). True TSS and IF can only be measured with a power device or pace device, but I'll show you how can get TSS with heart rate instead later as well.

More on it here: http://www.powertri-blog.com/davidwarden/how-to-quantify-the-stress-of-a-workout-with-tss.html
 
Hang on the TSS is worked out using duration, intensity, and relative intensity so there is absolutely no way you can work out the TSS before you have riden the course:




More on it here: http://www.powertri-blog.com/davidwarden/how-to-quantify-the-stress-of-a-workout-with-tss.html

If you think about it, on its most simple level (leaving out NP and IF), TSS is calculated using Duration x Intensity, so if (for illustration purposed) I did 60 mins at sweetspot today (let`s say 90 TSS per hour), I could calculate TSS as 1 x 90 = 90 TSS. But using that very basis, if I know that tomorrow I will ride 90 mins at sweetspot I can predict what my TSS will be - 1.5 x 90 = 135.

Sure, there is a problem where you don`t know the duration of the ride and are working from distance, as wind/road conditions etc will have a strong influence on either the time required to complete that ride (if sticking to a certain intensity) or the intensity required to complete the ride (if sticking to a certain duration). Hence, in those situations, then yes, TSS won`t be accurate, but it will give an indication.
 
I think using this method gives a very "WIDE" interpretation of a TSS score as there is no way of knowing what your exertion rate or intensity will be on climbs or as you say road/weather conditions.

Also leaving out IF and NP is basically removing all the scientific fact fro the equation - so you might as well pull a number out of a hat and use that as your TSS :D
 
I think using this method gives a very "WIDE" interpretation of a TSS score as there is no way of knowing what your exertion rate or intensity will be on climbs or as you say road/weather conditions.

Also leaving out IF and NP is basically removing all the scientific fact fro the equation - so you might as well pull a number out of a hat and use that as your TSS :D

Sure, the climbing makes things difficult, but if you are using HR, you can control your intensity, provided the gradient is not too steep and pushes you out of your target zone. When using HR, you can ignore NP (see here),
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/normalized-power,-intensity-factor,-training-stress-score.aspx
and HR gives you IF.
From Friel`s blog:-
http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2009/09/estimating-tss.html
To estimate TSS you must know two things: How long was the workout, and how intense was the workout. How long is easy. You just need a stopwatch. How intense is the hard piece. This is where estimation comes in if you don't have a power or pace device. To estimate intensity for a workout you need either a subjective Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) or average heart rate. Both of these are far from perfect, but they can give you a TSS estimation which is close. And given that you will use the same method each time you should be relatively accurate (or inaccurate as the case may be)
 
How to know the Training Stress Score of a ride before the actual ride?

As per the discussion, it won`t be accurate but will give you an indication.

Friel lists a guide to TSS for HR zones
Est-TSS-2-705890.png


The way I see it, you would need to know approximately what speed you can maintain for each zone per terrain - can use VAM for climbing segments. Now if you were on the flat, it would be easy, as one simple calculation. If flat, uphill at a steady gradient, downhill, then again, fairly straightforward. But inbetween will be difficult. However, through a combination of distance/course profile and analysing previous rides, I`m sure you could produce a ballpark figure.

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/normalized-power,-intensity-factor,-training-stress-score.aspx
The following scale can be used as an approximate guide:

Less than 150 - low (recovery generally complete by following day)
150-300 - medium (some residual fatigue may be present the next day, but gone by 2nd day)
300-450 - high (some residual fatigue may be present even after 2 days)
Greater than 450 - very high (residual fatigue lasting several days likely)
 
Back
Top Bottom