Archiv der Kategorie: Tom

Belgische Mehrzweck Waffel.

von | 24. Dezember 2007 · 04:36

JEROME TOGE (a.k.a. Ume-ga-tani Toge)

[Tom] Found Michael’s message late last evening proposing a ride over the notorious Jerome Toge…couldn’t resist of course. It’s always nice to have an excuse to wake up a bit early even on the day before Christmas. The ride was quite powerful – three hours flat – without a break (except for the obligatory photo session). Here are the pics…

[Michael] I was only too happy that Tom called me the night before and confirmed that he would ride with me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have the strength to leave the warm bed in the morning. Wake up at 6.20hr, left the house at 7.10 hr and was 2 minutes before 8 at Sekidobashi where Tom was already waiting. Had some strong headwind moving out but the pace was ok.

Then he really pulled it and we were going 34 km/hr average along the Mutsumi Dori towards Itsukaichi. I had problems to keep up and was already pretty much exhausted when we reached the Sakamoto crossing, the start point of the Toge Baka #5 : Jerome Hill.

Perhaps you are wondering why this hill is called Jerome Hill. Well, the hill was first described in the ancient „Annals from Zipangu“ [Kodansha, AD 584] when from the nearby sea French gods descended from the waves as shown in the photo (right: original photoshot from AD 584, left: later re-done as a major movie with Halle Berry). The gods brought various types of French cheese with them which they intended to distribute to the needy and the poor in the Musashino plains. However, before reaching their destination, they had to cross a high mountain and on the way up they were so exhausted that they ate almost all the cheese they have brought with them. Upon which they returned to France, only one of the lesser gods called Jerome move over the hill to the plains where he happily lived ever after.

In any case, I was already done before I started the climb. Tom did it in 8:16 min and me in 10:28 min. The nice thing about Jerome hill is, that it is followed by an even nicer descent. The roads were still wet so we were a little bit careful. Then we had a very nice backwind taking us home and we were zooming with 38 km/hr along the roads. We saw some bonfires prepared at the Tamagawa for the new years eve and for the first time I could see the mountains behind mount Fuji from the river. The view was really magnificent.I said goodbye to Tom, this might have been the last ride of the year. Than with the full backwind I speeded home : 112 km in 4:14 hr, no breaks, some kind of sprint perhaps.

So herewith I declare the Christmas ride to Jerome’s hill as a new tradition. One has to start early in the morning and be back before noon. No breaks are allowed, as this is the start of the fastening period, which lasts until 5 PM the same day. Hope you will join next year.

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Eingeordnet unter 2007, Jerome, Mob, Tom

von | 9. Dezember 2007 · 11:26

SUZUGANE & HINAZURU TOUGE

You can read all about this ride at the blog of Tom but please allow me to add some comments from my point of view. Well first of all it had been a very busy month with alot of visitors from Europe, many business trips and subsequently a lot of good food. Not to mention that I quit smoking in May and this makes proper weight control even more difficult. Now, since spring my body weight has increased by the magnitude of a 2.000 Euro+ bike weight. So I need a new bike which is about the same magnitude more light, or I am not competitive any longer.

That is basically the reason why I tell everybody that I am in bad shape and I refrain from attending challenging tours. In particular when David sets a pace of 40 km/hr plus during the first hour of an seven hour tour.

Also I do not usually make tours of more than, say 180 km. In particular not in December. So I checked my recordings for this year and found only these tours which were longer than the one yesterday :

Sadogashima 210km in May
Matsuhime 219km in June with Jerome, david and Marek
Matsuhime [abgebrochen] 203km in September with Tom and David
Noto Tour 440km in three days in September

Also I do not test new roads in winter. I try to stick to the known ones which don’t give me headacches and provide challenges. It is always hard to climb up a mountain you don’t know for the first time as you have no idea where the climb will end.

But nevertheless this was a very pleasant ride. The roads in the conutryside were beautiful and a complete blue sky added to the good mood we were in. Tom rode a very nice pace so that I could stay on his backwheel all the time. And he was constantly lying about the lenth of the climbs so that I didn’t lost confidence to make it. The average speed was not so fast but we also din’t made too much breaks. I felt basically good all the ride, except for some of the harder climbs and I never had the feeling I wouldn’t make it. And of course the distance from my house to Sekidobashi where I met Tom is about 24 km, so I need to do 40 kms or so more than him in the end.

But nevertheless, a splendid day out in the country. We saw a lot of hoshigaki hang up for drying at some of the farm houses, sometimes inbetween the underwear after the daily washing. We asked some shops if they sell them but nobody did. I guess it is just not considered something to sell in this area, everybody does it on their own, everybody has some so there is no need for selling and buying. But luckily I found some in the supermarket today. Pretty expensive (750 JPY for 250 gramm) but they were very nice indeed. Now I finally now how they taste.

The last piece of road from the 7-11 at Takaoguchi to my home was quite adrag but I made in within 2 hours. It was getting dark already when I was in Futago-Tamagawa and I arrived in complete darkness at home. At least I had my red backlight with me.


Here is one more information, the cyclo info from this tour. The peaks are (from the left) Otarumi Toge, Suzugane Toge (after which a long downhill was promised to me), Hinazuru „Maglev“ Toge (it seems that there is a depot from the maglev train testing facility located there) and Otarumi Toge again.

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Eingeordnet unter 2007, Tom

von | 2. Dezember 2007 · 07:56

Easy Training Ride on December 2nd

I was on my bike today for the first time since I had the accident at the Saiko race. I knew that David and Jerome also planned to ride today, but I didn’t had the self-confidence to keep up with them today; considering in particular that David must be very hot to ride his new Cervelo bike for the first time. So I started rather late at 08:10hr after preparing myself, it is always difficult to decide about the clothing in autumn, the temperature was between 8 and 16 degrees, but I made the right choices. But even my Pearl Izumi shoecovers on, but that was good because nevertheless my feets were cold. Also yesterday, when I cleaned my car I finally found my speed meter under the seats which was missing for a month or so – great.

I rode on the left side of the Tamagawa at a leisurely speed of 27 – 30 km/h up to Tamagawa where I crossed over. If I ride with the other Positivo Espresso guys I normally stay on the left side, but when I ride alone I go without thinking over the bridge to he right side – perhaps remiscent of the Veloz days. Speed was not fast but I rode through Noborito and then crossed over again shortly before Y park to the left side. I met some other riders there who had about the same speed as I had and we all became a little bit faster. I felt better, although I somehow lost the trust in my beloved green Cannondale bike. Did it have some cracks in the frame? Why is the headset making these noises? I don’t know, I do not want to blame my bike but it is time for a new one.

I went along further the Tamagawa up to Mutsumi Bridge. The park down there is still closed,2 1/2 months after the Taifun. Also the roads in the floodland are still in pretty bad shape. Then I took the road up to Itsukaichi and when I arrived there at the station I made a turn to the left.

The first climbing started and I was doing ok. No great, but ok. Then at Sakamoto I took the road towards Jerome Hill. As we all know, the hill is named after the shape of the belly of Jerome, which you can see not at all in the attached touring profile. This is a beautiful road and it is even more so during the autumn season. Red and yellow leaves everywhere, kakis, mandarins, some nice farming houses with thatched roofs, open sliding doors with rice paper – really beautiful, really countryside.

At 2:20 hrs I was on top of Jerome hill. I never did this under two hours, so the time was ok. The desccent was also fast with maximum 63 km/h, although I didn`t felt very comfortable. I made a longer rest at the 7/11 close to the Wachi bike shop where I also needed to visit the toilet.

I am not sure why I am riding such uninteresting, tasteless and embarrassing things, but going to the toilet during wintertime is always a hassle. In order to get prepared, I need to get rid off my winter jacket,then get a naked upperbody to remove my other jersey before I can finally lower by bibs. I always double check if the toilet door is locked – I do not want to be found half naked on a 7-11 toilet having sex with my bicycle.

After the break I tried to follow the Tamagawa somehow and tried a lot of new roads. When I was back on the dike, I met by chance Jerome, David and Tom who came back from a light training ride to Sagamiko and some secret mountain roads I am not supposed to know of. Tom was as usual in good shape, David and Jerome looked rather tired so I hat no problem to keep up with them. The new Cervelo of David is really beautiful. I like the Positivo sticker on the backside in particular.

So we took it easy going home and I visited Nagai’s store with Jerome. But it was so crowded.
Went home, played soccer on the PS2 and had a nice cheese bread from Kaisers.

All in all a good ride, 5 hours in total and a good start to train again.
Of course on a new bike.

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Eingeordnet unter 2007, David, Jerome, Mob, Tom

von | 8. November 2007 · 06:07

Giro de Hotaka

Last weekend, I met Michael & his family, Marek, Stephen & Ryoko at Hotaka. I was there with my “French team” to participate in the Day Two “Giro de Hotaka,” a 121km ride around Mount Hotaka in Gunma Pref. The size of this event (max. 300 riders), gorgeous surroundings and variety of the parcourse (more downhill than uphill) makes this event a very attractive & recommendable one to all Positivo Espresso riders!

One drawback as David pointed out correctly is the dangerous „touristy ride-cum-race“ mixed format and this is what our friend Marek found out much to his frustration. Some guy touched Marek’s back wheel at the first downhill section at 40-50km/h, started to whobble and crashed! Marek, his wheel damaged beyond repair, was forced to sit out the rest of the race in the “broom wagon” trailing behind the last rider (which Marek told me was a pain to look at).

For some people including me, the event did not fully live up to its expectations. A lack of race marshals on major turns and intersections caused too much confusion. At the “Junction of Doom,” I led a pack of about 15 riders on the wrong road losing more than half an hour! Otherwise the organization was good…o-miyage maitake mushrooms, bananas & VAAMs at two aid stations, mushroom soup, a piece of apple & lunch box at the end of the race…

“Giro de Hotaka” + the short Hotaka Hillclimb on Day 1 is a two-day event I definitely want to participate in again next year. Hopefully there will be many of the Positivo Espresso riders going as well.

Here is map / elevation chart of this marvelous „Giro“: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/bicycle/race/htkgiro/route.htm

mob: and here are the results : http://www.ne.jp/asahi/bicycle/race/result.htm

And I have some more pictures I wanted to add :

One showing Marek still optimistic before the start of the race. If only his speedmeter would have worked properly.

My family was also completely at the race and Anna our Aupair also joined. I hope that I can convert her during her 10 months stay in Japan into a cycling addict.

Should present her with the TREK bike from Tom.

TOM: If it’s for Anna I’ll fix you a special price!!

MOB : Did you see that Anna? Tom and me are getting serious here. I think you can do it, I mean you can still watch our kids, learn Japanese, go to HipHop dacing classes, enjoy nights out in Roppongi, Skype all your friends in Germany, get your friends to come to Japan, maintain your blog

ANNA: Ok, here is the deal: I’m looking for the kids, going to my Hip Hop classes, keep on stalking my family and friends in Germany (and get them to visit Japan), BUT: I’m quitting my Japanese class. Because I don’t think that I need any Japanese skills during cycling… 🙂

Then there is a photo of Ryoko, actually taken when I wanted to take a photo of Stephen as he was assembling his bike before the race. But as he was bended over and showed bis back to me it turned out not to be a good photo at all. But just by chance Ryoko was also somehow on the photo and she looks here very mysterious like Bernard Albrecht from NEW ORDER on the famous cover of FACE magazine, designed by Neville Brody in the Eighties. Stephen and Ryoko are really nice people and as a couple very harmonious. I should be full of praise.

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Eingeordnet unter Mob, Stephen, Tom

von | 21. Oktober 2007 · 14:26

The day we rode up to Yabitsu

David, david, Juliane and me met 8 AM at David’s house and we planned to meet Tom at Sekidobashi and ride up to Yabitsu, the perhaps back along the coast to Kamakura.



The rugby worlcup final match England against South Africa has started just at 4 AM the same day, so david was without any sleep and promptly he rode over a red traffic light on our way to Futago Tamagawa. So when I heard the sound of a car braking and then flesh on metal I naturally thought that david was still sleeping or just became awake, but in fact in was David who has hit a brandnew black Audi A6. Some scratches on the motor hood. David basically ok, stating that this has not heard as much as the crash with the Taxi some weeks ago. we needed to call the police and make proper filing, then we had a chance to visit the Segafredo at Futago while David was returning home to exchange his broken front wheel. I asked him if he told his wife about the accident. No, he didn’t, he downed two pain killers, told his wife that he had a mechanical problem and off he was to join us for a cup of coffee.


Finally at ten we left. Tom decided in the meantime to do his own training. We made leisurely speed up to Miyagase Lake, where we had a longer break. Total beautiful autumn weather. Kosmos and Kibana Kosmos blooking everywhere. Had a good meal and then we made the approach up to Yabitsu. Really one of my favourite rides, it is like going down two times because going up is mostly so gradual and even some flat stretches, you hardly realize that you are going up.


Midway I accelerated and went up on my own. Then we took some pictures on the top and went down the other side to Hadano where we hoped the train and went to Noborito (David and me) and Yoyogi Uehara (Juliane and david) respectively. Most beautiful day, I felt so happy on the road. Probably radiated happiness.

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Eingeordnet unter 2007, David, Juliane, Mob, Tom