joewein
Maximum Pace
- Oct 25, 2011
- 3,532
- 3,693
I had planned to head down the east coast of Izu, but for that I needed my car to get my bike close enough to Odawara and my daughter wanted to borrow it for furniture shopping. I almost went to Miura on Sunday with @olykoek and @jonmanjiro, but then they couldn't join me there for an all day ride.
If I couldn't ride into Izu I could still take a peek at it from around Odawara and ride enough km for my February Century (on Strava). There was a tile just south of Odawara castle that I had never touched because the main road that I always take skirts it. About 15 km beyond Odawara was the Manazuru peninsula with another tile not touched by the coastal road. Out and back would be around 180 km taking the shortest route, so just about doable in a day.
If I had done the ride with @olykoek I would have left at 06:00 to get to Yokohama reasonably early to make good use of the daylight, but with no meeting time I ended up leaving a very leisurely 2 1/2 hours later because unlike most people I don't mind riding hours and hours after sunset and coming back late.
The forecast for Saturday and Sunday was very mild, 16-18 deg C which is too warm for my usual winter wear of uniqlo fleece pants. I was wearing my shorts already on Saturday, partly to figure out how that would work, only to find it got very chilly at night when we were out on a family trip. Therefore on Sunday I started out in fleece pants but then changed into my shorts on the first conbini stop. I changed back again into fleece pants more than an hour after sunset as it was cooling off again. That worked very well.
First I rode down my usual route to Miura on Rt409 and Rt15 to near Minato Mirai. From there I switched to Rt1, following large parts of the Old Tokaido road and doing a route in reverse that we would have taken as the final leg of the Fleche ride from Aichi to Tokyo last year. Rt1 is not the greatest cycling road for sure, and neither is Rt246 which I used for the return trip (Matsuda to Futakotamagawa). So it was basically a Century ride on not to nice roads, with the reward of beautiful ocean views and views of Izu from Odawara, a stroll around the castle grounds, a Nepalese curry near the station and some sunset Fuji views before it got dark.
When I got to Odawara I figured it would be another 2 hours to Manazuru and back. I wouldn't get home before 23:00. So I only visited the tile there after the castle, then had a late lunch and started my return trip. On the way to Odawara I had already cleared on tile in Hiratsuka that only needed a short detour from the main road. I picked up two more tiles near Hadano south of 246 as it was getting dark. Then a couple of hours in the company of trucks and cars on Rt246 back to Tokyo, since it was the shortest, least hilly route.
Those tiles don't change my Max Square, but it was a good preparation for my 2021 Fleche ride coming up in 8 weeks. We'll be doing mostly the same route as planned last year, hopefully without 18 hours in the rain this time. The ride also extended my "Century a Month" streak to 102 months (8 1/2 years). Only 18 more months to make it to 10 years Meanwhile, there's a tile in Manazuru still waiting to be collected!
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