Archiv der Kategorie: Cervelo Soloist

Ludwig I. was king of Bavaria in the 19th century and contributed greatly to the city planning of Munich. His wedding is said to be the start of the „Oktoberfest“ tradition. His grandson Ludwig II., much better known as the „mad king“ squandered money unscrupulously and built many castles which now greatly contribute to the touristic value of the state. His tradition is continued by Japanese public works. Ludwig the Last is not related to any of the above (although one may argue that he posses a similar level of obsessions as his famous predecessors), but is the unofficial name of the perhaps last ride Ludwig (Manfred) and me did together last Sunday.

It was awful cold when I left the house at 5:20hr in the morning and arriving at the Tamagawa I found the view obscured by ground fog and frost. Almost a scene from autumn days. Ludwig was cyclo-crossing while I opted for the bare Cervelo without bottles, bags, lights but with new Shimano Ultegra rear wheel and 11/28 cassette. As I needed to be back home by 12:30 hr, we headed out fast along the Tamagawa and later Asagawa in direction Takao through an increasingly thick fog. Until I realised that my glasses had fogged up and the weather was not as bad as it seemed to be. Then, we made a turn on Jimbakaido and headed out for Wada; when we made one more turn suddenly the sky was blue and the temperature very pleasant – great. So we speeded up for the entry of Wada where we wanted to time-trial up.

I had prepared myself well for this; firstly I thought that Ludwig would pull me up, secondly I had a 34/28 gear to bring me through the hard times and thirdly I spend 30 minutes at the very nice toilet hut with heated toilet seat at the bus stop before the start of the climb to get rid of any excess weight which was still lingering in my bowels.

Off we went and Ludwig speeded ahead, but at least I could still see him some 20 – 30 meters ahead so I thought that I would be doing good. But somehow I was out of shape, the road was also slippery from the rain and snow and perhaps a 34/28 gear is just too easy – in any case I arrived only a minute later than Ludwig on the top but still did only a time between 20 and 21 minutes. Which is OK, but not really great after investing 40.000 Yen for a new wheel.

Perhaps next time a will try an enema to further reduce weight.

On the top we met Steve from TCC who rode up from the other side and was scheduled for hanami at Shinjuku Gyoen in the afternoon. I think it is a very good idea to go there after the cherry blossom season is over, as it will not be that crowded any longer.

We went down on the other side and continued back along route 20 where we made a stop at the Seven-Eleven before Sagamiko Station. Here we met some Japanese riders, two out of three on Cervelos and we asked them if they would know a road between route 20 and Tsukui lake after having crossed Otarumi in direction Takao. One of them was introduced as „quite kuwashii“ but he had no other suggestions but to go on 412/413 (..yawn..) which is anyway before Otarumi from this side, or to go up Otarumi (if we desperately wanted to do so) and ride down again the same side and then take 412/413 (..yawn..). Sorry guys, but in order to qualify as „kuwashii“ in our opinion, you must do better than this.

So we time-trialed up Otarumi from the Sagmiko side and again Ludwig went ahead but I was able to draft for about 2/3 of the time before we saw James and Yair riding down in the opposite direction. Again, I did a 17:34 min time which is OK but not great.

Going down the other side, we saw at least 30 – 40 riders going up: two larger Narushima groups, one group of Aqua guys in blue and some more individual riders. Clearly the good weather and the cycling boom in Japan has enticed everyone to leave the winter pillows behind and try some hills.

Ludwig and me, following our tradition to explore at least one new stretch of roads every ride out, wanted now to cross over to Tsukui lake riding some uncharted rindos and trails we have found on Google map the day before. So 2/3 of the way down we took a right turn and rode up a small road until we came to a charming hidden love hotel consisting of many small bungalows. Some meters up the road we met an equally charming hiking group of old ladies who we asked what the best way to Tsukui lake would be. They were definitely „kuwashii“ and advised us against going up this rode but to turn back and take the next road branching off from route 20.Which we did and that brought us to one of the famous Ukai restaurants, Toriyama which we hesitated to approve for PE as it seems to be rather expensive and does not stock Weider jelly packs. Some hundred meters further up the asphalted road stopped and became a rather nice dirt trail which then became a not so nice dirt trail and continued to become a rugged, slippery and poorly drained, dirty dirt trail, hardly fit for road bikes. Ludwig slipped and crashed just in front of me and then I went in front and crashed as well, so we decided to walk up part of the way. Actually, almost all of the way. On the top we had a nice view on Shiroyama lake and then we came to a small temple where we had an even better view of the Tsukui lake from a very new angle.Finally we rode down another dirt track to the main road at Tsukui, where I went ahead to Hashimoto and jumped the train home and Ludwig did some more riding as recorded in his own account:

After MOB had left for Hashimoto station, I cycled up to the Shiroyama reservoir lake. At the power generation plant, I saw a map that indicated one could walk all around the lake, and much of it looked like it was a paved road. I was delighted - I knew the lake from hiking by it at the opposite side, and had hitherto thought there was no access road around it. Actually MOB thought so too, and had noted that it was an exception to my observation that in Japan dam lakes always have access roads all around them.
I rolled down to the dam and crossed it on a widely paved road, frequented by hikers and a sports club of youngsters running around the lake in pairs. So far so good.

But as soon as I had crossed the dam, I found myself on a hiking trail which forced me to push or carry the bike. Can't be that long I thought. Well, it turned out to go on like this basically around the entire lake, climbing up probably 150m above the lake. I had to climb up and down many long stairs, and even where there were no stairs, it was mostly impossible to cycle.

There were plenty of hikers, and of course I drew their full attention - a biker on a hiking trail, how crazy... Yes, and that's a bit how I felt too.

Eventually I got close to Misawa Toge which MOB and I had crossed only a few hours ago. I found a gravel road that led down towards the lake and from there on was able to sit on my bike again continuously. I arrived back where I had started 45 minutes earlier. This had been much harder than I thought - and carrying a bike for most of the time made it harder than normal hiking.

Back down at the first conbini, I was debating whether to seek out other mountains, but with all the hiking, I had lost my rhythm and didn't really feel like doing another excursion.

I headed home instead, taking the Tank Road (with a small detour through the park) and its full extension (which I find more interesting than the Tank Road itself), and then the roads through Tsurukawa, Noborito on to Setagaya Dori.

Early on I passed a slower rider in full gear on a road racer. He felt slighted being overtaken by a crossbike and tried to pursue me, sitting in my draft. I shook him off pretty quickly. But now I was in racing mood, so kept cycling the full bit home at high speed and relatively high heart rate. That compensated for the early finish.

144km with 1900m BBiT climbing (this time possibly close to the true climbing due all the hiking which my Ciclo doesn't capture well).

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/jp/kanto/880127158506963196

A new video from the Cervelo series. Perhaps not as good as the 2009 videos, but still better than almost everything else about cycling on the web.

I liked the picture of the Cervelo rider in the typical flat lands of Belgium; so similar to my home town. And so much closer as well.

After the rained-out weekend I met with Ludwig yesterday at Hashimoto to do a short but climbing-intensive trip over some new roads in the Route 20 / Doshi area under heavy police surveillance.We started on time at 7:30hr in front of Hashimoto station and tried a new shortcut that eventually brought us to the North Tsukui lake road. I wanted to show Ludwig my new discovery, the NORTH TSUKUI LAKE TRUNK EXTENSION which is very silent but in rather bad shape as you can see in the photos. But it has all the ingredients of a wonderful road: Three huge barriers which are shouting at you „Climb over me, please!„, complete lack of any human activities, landslides, and great views. And all of this very close to Tokyo.
From there on we road to road 20 (the origin plan included to ride up Bijotani but I thought that wouldn’t be a good idea in winter, given the conditions of the road).

Ludwig thought about a nice shortcut from road 20 to Akiyama, but we were stopped by some construction works. We tried to convince the guys there that it would be OK to let us pass, but we couldn’t. In the end they were helpful to show us an alternative road which brought as to Akiyama as well.

We then started to climb Kando-Toge (not Ganda-Toge, it seems) which Ludwig has done already once from the Doshi-Michi side and Tom has reported out first in his heartwarming-story about the honey farmers of Doshi who in the 18th century cut this path into the rock with their bare hands in an effort to get access to the free market economy in the villages at road 20. Only to get raided by corporate M&A lawyers on the pass who forced them to integrate their operations into huge Doshi Honey conglomerates, lease the assets to dubious investment backs and sell the not performing bees as sub-prime collateralized debt obligations to the local pension funds. Oh sorry, I come back to cycling now.

The climb up covers about 500 meter elevation difference and the pass is about elevation 800 meters plus. On the top we were greeted by snow, a very much different scenery to the first signs of springs at Tsukui lake.

I wanted to pee, but because of the honey thieves the whole area is still very much under remote police surveillance. I found the only possible place to pee only after some serious thinking (please enlarge for maximum effect).Mount Fuji was now clearly visible between the mountains and after riding down on the other side, we continued to Doshi Michi, and then to road 76 and Makino Toge which I also had climbed only once last year.

After that we continued to Miyagase lake and started to climb up Yabitsu as the cul de sac of the day. When I started the clock, Ludwig said „We don’t do a time trial, do we?“ And I answered: „No, but I don’t want to slog up as well“ So we started pretty fast, kept steady and after we saw another cyclist in front of us we went even faster. After 20 minutes I lost Ludwig who was speeding ahead and I went up my own pace. I wasn’t that good but also not too shabby when I reached the top where Ludwig has waited already for 4 minutes, probably setting a new Togebaka record (which needs to be entered on this blog).

The descent was rather fast, although I was careful on the site of my crash some weeks ago. But I reached more than 69 km/hr on the stretch after the donuts slope which was good enough to reach Hadeno station on time and take a train home.

Incredibly, the whole ride was only 111 km long, but with almost 1.800m of climbing it was pretty intensive and a good start into the week.
Off to Germany now any minute.

Yesterday I made a mid-range, run of the mill ride from my house to Onekan, Tank Road and further on to the North Tsukui lake road. So far nothing special.

But on the map I had discovered, that the road around Tsukui lake is actually continuing from the point where we normally make a left turn and fly downwards towards the suspension bridge over the Tuskui lake. So I continued to stay on the small road and after crossing two barriers I found myself completely alone on the abandoned road which is much the same as the beautiful North road itself. I fail to understand why this road was given up a long time ago, as this seems to be an extremely important trunk road connecting the suburbs of Tsukui with those of the villages in the shadows of Otarumi. Road conditions were very poor, some landslides, a lot of debris on the surface and most of the time I had to walk. But after a while I came to a second barrier and I continued on the normal road up to the point where we are normally, coming from Otarumi, take a right turn and cross the bridge first, followed by the tunnel on the way to Tsukui.

A very nice distraction but perhaps better suited for MTBs or cyclo cross bikes.

It was a beautiful,warm, almost-spring day and on the top of Otarumi I thought it would be nice if we would have had lists for downhills as well as for the uphill time trials we are doing. As Otarumi from the Takao side was the first uphill TT we posted on the blog, the opposite downhill would be the appropriate start for the downhill TT which I called for ease of reference the Down-Jones Index (DJI); an expression commonly known to riders from the PE team.

To achieve a good downhill time can also we a nice consolation if your uphill time isn’t that good.

So, I went down in 7:05 min which is probably not very good, but at least a time to start with. See the list on the right.

This corresponds to about 45 km/hr average speed. Please feel free to beat this. But be careful, Otarumi was not the first time I thought about the DJI. The first time was on Yabitsu two weeks ago and then I crashed pretty badly.

Mishima and Atami are two adjacent stops on the Tokaido Shinkansen line. By Shinkansen train, it takes precisely 8 minutes to travel. It took Ludwig and me almost 10 hours on Saturday.Shinkansen lines are almost straight, direct lines, connecting points with each others. Moreover, they rarely cover higher elevations, so a lot of tunneling and bridging works are required to built these railways. As we didn’t dare to run with our bikes on the Shinkansen tracks, the second best option to ride from Mishima to Atami is to take natinal road number 1 which leads through Hakone and includes a nasty and congested climb and a ridiculously steep downhill from Atami Toge. Yes, 32 km of joyless riding over some big hills. Conclusion: The best way to get from A to B is not necessarily the shortest straight line. Ludwig and me wanting to avoid the mountains, chose the road which circumferences the mountain ridge at Hakone. Unfortunately the ridge continues until the tip of Izu peninsular so our trip on Saturday looked like this:I admit that we cheated in the very South and took a shortcut over Jaishi Toge which turned out to be the highest pass of the day at 370 m elevation.

This time we found the way out of Mishima rather fast and arrived at the West coast road in time when suddenly I felt my leg hurting and my bicycle moving somehow strange. A short inspection revealed, that I have broken another spoke on my Zonda rear wheel, the one next to the one which has been exchanged last month. Luckily Ludwig had a spoke wrench tool with him so we could somehow true the wheel and continue to Atami.The West coast was beautiful as always with blue skies but too dizzy to see mount Fuji in the back. Although the road runs along the coast, there are a lot of ups and downs and it is not easy to keep a good pace. So when we arrived at Matsuzaki, we opted to take the Jaishi road, which was also more pleasant to ride than the rather busy main road along the coast.In Shimoda we met David (another one, not one of the Davids mentioned recently on this blog) and took a look at his sailing boat which he is currently outfitting for the trip from Shimoda to Sydney. He told me before about his plans so I expected a huge boast, two masts at least, perhaps 20 meters long, cannons sticking out from every possible opening, the Jolly Rodger hoisted at the top… but no, this was a rather small boat, which looks to be suitable to cross the Tamagawa for example. But again, I am no expert in sailing.We approved the port but not the boast and then continued to have a quick lunch at the Lawson in front of Shimoda station. Is it OK under Japanese regulations to sit in front of convenience stores in urban locations and check mails on the Blackberry?Now we had a nice tailwind when we rode North along the East coast. But there was also a lot of traffic which was due to the fact that many visitors came to see the blooming plum trees in Izu. Or perhaps the blooming cherry trees. Ludwig and me saw a lot of blooms along the way, but he being an economist and me being an engineer, we couldn’t decide whether they were plums of cherries. Or both.For the first time this year I had the feeling that spring is now knocking on the door. Spring, the season where you suddenly fall in love with the girl selling Tofu at the local supermarket and you start to plan ridiculous long cycling tours for the summer.

Traffic became now really terrible. And drivers in Izu are bad. Or perhaps they are from Tokyo and want to return as fast as possible and they are ready with there nerves.And some of them don’t brake for cyclists. This might be, because they drive Toyotas and they don’t brake for anything because they cannot brake at all.

I started to think about what would have happened if the recent quality issues with Toyota would have happened with Shimano group sets and which countermeasures could be enacted:

„Dear Shimano Dura Ace 7800 group set customer. We are sorry to inform you that under certain circumstances the following situation might happen: You are riding on your bike and you want to brake, however instead of braking you feel the urge to pedal full speed ahead as fast as you can go. Even if you brake you cannot come to a stop any longer. If this has happened, please bring your bike to an authorized Shimano dealer who will upgrade your bike so that in case you pedal full speed and you pull both brake levers as hard as you can, the crank will disengage from the front cog and you will come to an immediate, sudden and perhaps painful stop.“

Now, we took another longer road to avoid the traffic shortly before Ito city (the pointless ride tradition )and I could convince Ludwig that we must complete our original goal and reach Atami in daylight. Which we actually did. Just milli-seconds before the last photon of the day was shot in direction Atami station from the sun, we managed to arrive and take a wonderful evidence photo.

All in all, it was for both of us a trip that involved more than 200 km distance and more than 2.300 meters elevation. I still wonder if we wouldn’t have been faster going over Hakone.

I must say I am very impressed by the series of videos about the 2009 season of the Cervelo Test Team as sponsored on bartape.net and/or as video podcast on itunes. Dominic and James have pointed this out.

I include below some screenshots from the videos I have made on my PC with Quick Screen Capture, a very handy tool which works exactly as „print screen“ should work: It takes a precise „photo“ of your PC screen in the moment you press the button, so you can for example also take pictures out of movies which you cannot with print screen. Or from Allsports.

Aesthetically, Cervelo has come a long way from their first bike shown above to the bikes they make today. I am in no position to judge, but looking at the way they design their bikes, their clothes and also now their videos, I believe that aesthetics play a big part in their brand image – and it’s a different kind of aesthetics as compared to other makers and teams. Not as loud and „sportive“, focusing more on melancholy, suffering, pain. The only other cycling-related maker than comes to my mind with a similar image is Rapha.

What I like about the videos in particular is, what is missing: They are almost bare of any direct promotion for Cervelo products (actually the first ones are, but this becomes less and less until the final Tour de France videos). And in addition they are also almost bare of any information about the results of the race the team entered. It is just about cycling and riders speaking about cycling. And combined with the Koyaanisqatsi like soundtrack, again bare of any traces of Euro-techno-beats, it appeals very much to the romantic rider in me. I would love to have seen „Road to Roubaix“ in a similar matter.

Another thing that I learned from the videos is that a cycling team consists of riders, mangers and support staff of many nationalities, Italians, Spanisch, Germans, Australians, Swiss, Norwegians …. and they communicate in English. Naturally perhaps most of them don’t enjoyed (?) higher education and at least my classmates who were brilliant in the gym were not equally gifted in learning foreign languages.

Now, in international business topics as „intercultural management“ and „crosscultural communication“ are big topics and often cited as major factors for success or failure of international business ventures. Now hearing some of them speaking English, I wonder how can they communicate effectively during the races: Some of the Germans speak with accents of German offices in US WW2 movies while the Australians/NZlanders are hard to understand even for me.

As someone who, sitting in a restaurant with his teammates, wasn’t even able to bring across the difference between „fencing“ and „fanzine“ to his English mother tongue teammates, I wonder how they manage to decide strategy on the (poor quality) team radio during a race when every second counts.

All in all it is a very motivating video, I find some traces of my own addiction to cycling included in the footage and after watching it I had the urge to ride out on my bike immediately.

Which I did.

Rather easy to imagine that this conversation would have happened in the same manner with a new Cervelo bike equipped with a Shimano Di-2 groupset parked in the room instead of a Plasma TV mounted to the wall.