Archiv der Kategorie: Cervelo Soloist

The Hakone climb starts at the Asahi bridge, conveniently located after another 7-11 and then continues for 14.2 km and 745 meters up to the highest point of route #1 at elevation 874 m. It is a very long and demanding climb and it definitely feels like more than the average 5% grade on which one would arrive mathematically. I never took somebody with me on this climb as well, as the traffic is heavy on this road and you also need to go 90 km before even starting to climb. So for years that used to be the hardest climb I did within a season. I normally did it only once, and until 2007 I was not able to climb up in one go. But today the weather was nice and cool, I was fresh as I have enjoyed a good tailwind up to Odawara and I wanted to go on an aggressive attack after the Tokyo hill climb race with a much steeper gradient. I started at a good speed and constantly checked the altitude meter. I continued to feel good and pedaled at a high cadence with 15 km/hr up. When I reached Miyanoshita I had to continue on the sidewalk for a while, as the road was clogged by cars and buses. But the higher one comes, the lighter the traffic gets. By the way, there is also a shorter backroad, but as the elevation difference is the same, a shorter back road means an even steeper gradient, which cannot possibly be balanced by a lighter traffic. I recognized all the places I have had breaks before, the small shop before the Fujiya hotel, the curve where the cable car is running close by, a Lawson along the road, and finally at elv. 600 this huge Yunessun spa, where I go sometimes with my family. There are large swimming pools and a series of outside onsens with different themes and different tastes, like tea, wine and other liquids one what not necessarily consider to take a bath in. Sometimes it seems to get crowded. I completely forgot how much the maximum elevation is, so I had no idea how much I would need to further continue. But I still felt good, although I switched from cadence to brute force and my speed was now more in the 10 – 15 km/hr range. But I made my way up steadily and finally I recognized the last curves to the top. There are two important lesson I learned about climbing: 1. As long as you see a river on the side of the road it is still a long way to the top. 2. When there is no water but wind, you are coming close. Temperature on top of route #1 was around 17 degrees, I started to feel cold as I didn’t brought any windbreaker with me. And then I reached the very top: Oh, wow, cool, in less than an hour for 14.2 km and 745 meters up! I never did this before. That gave me a very boost of confidence for the forthcoming races in Shuzenji and Gunma. I took some photos and then prepared for the rest of the ride. I also introduced this climb as Togebaka #11 on this site, knowing that none of you will ever try it. So I included all my annual results since 2003.

Some weeks ago Positivo Espresso was planning a tour climbing Odarumi from Enzan. On the day before we rode over Wada, Tawa, Tsuru, Imagawa and Yanagizawa to Enzan, however I had to give up before Yanagizawa -just too much climbing during too hot climate. Unpaid bills need to be paid, criminals return to the place of their crimes, so finally on Thursday I found the time to complete the trip and conquer Yanagizawa Toge. I left the house rather late and cruised at a leisurely pace in direction Ome. On the way I met Laurent who was riding aimlessly along the Tamagawa. Funny enough, he had the same idea as me: On the Positivo trip he continued to Enzan, however he dropped out the next day before the climb to Odarumi. Haunted by the memory of this missed chance, he took off one week for biking, drove by car to Enzan and climbed up Odarumi. Well done, Laurent.

We split and I took the first break at Ome Station. I just cannot pass by without dropping in at the Aurora bakery and buy some „Royal Milk Bread“, the most delicious massive piece of fatty bread I have ever eaten.

I the continued to ride to Okutama Station. It was just before noon and it became really hot. I didn’t felt that I was in too great a shape. So when I arrived at Okutama station I felt tired and it was just the ride time for a short nap on a bench. And this is what I did. I woke up, don’t know why and immediately it started to rain. Real, heavy rain. The dices, the hearts of the women and the weather in the mountains are unpredictable. This says an old Japanese proverb which I just made up. I took cover at the station and after 20 minutes or so the rain stopped and I could finally start the approach on Yanagizawa. I rode about 200 meters and then I noticed something very strange: Only this distance away, he road was completely dry, that means I hadn’t rained at all there! This must have been a special rainfall limited to a very small patch of land. But the sky was cloudy and I could hear thunder and seethe lighting. The rain front was moving in, but luckily I managed to escape somehow.

Okutama Station is at elevation 320 m app. and Yanagizawa at 1.460 m, so I had a long climb in front of me. I have done this only one time before with David, david and Juliane in April, when there was still some snow left on the top. It took me almost three hours then. The climb to Okutama Lake at elv. 520 m is nothing special. 5 years ago that would have been a major feat for me, but now it is really nothing special any more, even in the heat. The next part is then cruising along the shores of the Okutama for quite a while which is almost flat. Then the first part of the climbing starts, but that’s also more an up and down portion which finally leads to the village of Tabayama at elv. 650m. I arrived there in much better shape then some weeks ago. The weather was also OK and not as hot as down in the city, so I really lost all excuses not to do the Yanagizawa pass. So I continued to climb at a pace of 10 – 15 km/hr and it took a lot of effort but I continuously moved up the hills.

In summer the landscape there is also much more beautiful and green compared to the scenario I saw in April. There is not too much traffic and luckily not too much public works (except for that complete unnecessary and stupid tunnel construction which will result in shortening the approach by estimated 200 meters). I climbed about 10m/min and when I was at elevation 1.000 m I was pretty sure that I would make the climb in one go. In was now much cooler, more in the range of 24 degrees but I was running out of water. And climbing became harder.

I reached the small soba shack at elv. 1.200 me and it was really getting hard to climb. Only 200 meters up…..only 100 meters up, my speed dropped to less than 10 km/hr and I was zigzaging the steeper parts of the road. Then I finally saw the toge. I still had the power for a final sprint and moved in: 2:22 hrs (see Toge Baka), much faster than the last time and, more important, without any breaks. But two hours of more or less continuous climbing had taken their toll and I was feeling very tired. As you can see in this photo, taken in front of the Yanagizawa rest area.
Actually this photo was taken, after I have rested for half an hour. When I arrived their the situation was like this: Totally exhausted I tried to each out for the gigantic soft ice which I thought was waiting for me.
I must remark, that the people running the restaurant up there are really nice and helpful, contrary to the witch at Wada Toge.

The day’s work was done. I had a good training for the forthcoming Tokyo Hill Climb race on Sunday. I then prepared for the long descent to Enzan. This is really a very nice descent, leading over some long and curved bridges with nothing but depth on both sides of the road. I started cautiously in the beginning, but after a while I went faster and I almost hit 70 km/hr at some stretches.

I have much more confident on my Cervelo bike going fast than I had an the Cannondale one I used to many years and gradually I am improving. I used to be a real sissy, but now I am almost a rabbit.

Enzan is really beautiful with all the fruit trees, I took some photos of the peaches and grapes. Then I arrived at the station and I was lucky that I could jump on a fast express train taking my home. When the rain passed Otsuki on the way back it was raining, so I guess I was lucky with the weather this time.
So, revenge on Yanagizawa has been made, now I still have to climb Odarumi.

Yes, yesterday was the TTT (Thursday’s three Toge) ride, an annual event initiated by Positivo Espresso with a long tradition dating back to 2008. I like this Japanese tradition of having none and showing off with it. How many times have we read slogans painted on cars on signboards such as „We have good nature and we want you to know. Since 2007.“?
In any case, just after work I rode along Tamagawa and Asakawa looking for some distractions. Boy’s day is close by and carp streamers (koinobori) are everywhere to be found. I saw a very nice example along the Asakawa close to Hachioji. There was an even better one at Kosuge [Matsuhime] some weeks ago, but I didn’t took a photo.

There were lots of children let loose from school or Kindergarten and playing in the river. The teachers were constantly chasing after them and tried to get them back behind closed walls. Once captured, the kids were forced to stand to attention at the drill yard.
So it was a typical beautiful day in May in the country of Japan. After some time I arrived at the Takao 7-Eleven but instead of making a break I decided to give Wada Toge a try instead. I have been there only once in 2006 with Tom, Juliane, David, Jerome and Laurent so I didn’t know the way, but I found the small road leading to Wada. Before that I crossed the Tokyo cemetery at Hachioji where there is a long and straight decent and it is easy possible to speed up to 70 km/hr – just the right dosis of speed before it is getting very slow towards the top of Wada. There were a lot of gales and strong winds this day, so sometimes I couldn’t go too fast.

I was surprised how long one need to ride until the last bus stop before the Wada Toge ascent, I took a short break there and then I attacked Wada. Wada is hell for me. Wada is about 350 meters up at a distance of 3.7 km, so the average slope is already 10%, but in some places it seems more like 20%. With a standard 53/39 crank and a 12/27 cassette AND my body weight it is somewhat difficult to stay in motion at all. My speed was partly dropping to 7 or 8 km/hrs and I wouldn’t have been surprised if some hikers would have overtaken me. It is virtually impossible to demount from the bike, because once you do, you can never gain the momentum to mount again and clip the shoes in. You simply fall down.

So I had a very hard time, but I didn’t gave up. In the end I was saved by two Japanese guys who turned up with their car behind me. Two men, sitting in a mini car branded „Bistro“ with small stuffed animals all over the seats and dashboard and God knows where and shouting with high-pitched voices „Gambare!“. Please draw your own conclusions, but my one is : Real men don’t buy cars which are named BISTRO. So having the choice to be sodomized or speeding up I decided for the later.

This brought me to the witchhouse on top of Wada Toge in 23:07 min. Not bad an improvement, if I consider that it took me 41 min the first time I went up. OK, mostly I walked up in 2006. But please take a look here.
This is the official blog of the crazy Wada tribe and obviously some of them do it in less than 15 minutes. OK, they are also less than 2/3 of my weight. So there is still way to go.

At the top of Wada I stayed away from the witch who as usually had some older male companion and was bitching around („..good that no children are here…“). The last time a group of us went up there, they were all bewitched for one hour as we can see in this evidence photo. Juliane is in front with obviously Jerome. If there was ever any question about.

I then rode down the road I have came up to Wada because I was not sure about the roads on the other side and anyway I refuse to ride through Uenohara these days. I then took a well deserved break at the Takao 7-Eleven and then started to attack Otarumi, the second Toge of the day. I was pretty lame on the first flat part of the road. Then I experienced the first LSD trip of my life: I was coming closer to the top of Otarumi, but the road didn’t got steeper at all. It was like to whole world has been flattened out indefinitely – the distance was still there, however there was no elevation at all. I had been dragged into a two dimensional world, where the word „hill climb“ was not invented yet.

That was the experience – in fact of course it was the after effect of climbing Wada. After the 20% slope of Wada everything seemed to be so …. flat. I wasn’t too fast but also not too slow, it was just very, very easy to climb up; it was the best LSD trip I never had.

Sorry to emphasize this LSD thing all the time, but the inventor of LSD, Dr. Albert Hofmann died just this week at the age of 102 and there is a very good post at BSNYC about him and his connection to cycling. I think it is a very amazing story, in particular the part that he [probably intentionally] took some LSD to check out for himself when there was no particular effect observed when administered on animals in the lab. Nobody would do this today, just imagined if somebody from the lab had tried an overdoses Viagra in the Tokyo subway during rush hours on his way home from the lab. These things are dangerous today!

And that he chooses to do that a second time just before he went home on his bicycle. I would like to propose him for a honorary membership in the Positivo Espresso team.

OK, so after the trip ended, I descended on the other side and went in one stretch along road 412, 413 and 64 to Miyagase lake where I made a small break at the entrance to Yabitsu Toge. Then I started the attack on Yabitsu Toge. Wada Toge is hell – but Yabitsu is really one of my favourite Toges in the Tokyo area. The ascent is so gradual the first kilometers and the landscape and the river is so nice. Constantly concrete slopes are added on the sides of the road unfortunately but looking at the state deficit this will not continue forever.

I went up the first time in 05 or 06 with Juliane. It was a typical Juliane trip. It looked like it will start to rain but Juliane convinced me that this was just an illusion and that surely it will stay try until we reached Hadano station. She stated this was her usual confidence, just like she used to say „Sure, I have three cartridges with me.“ So once we started to climb heavy rain started and didn’t stop. It became more and more unbearable. At some point a huge wooden ship was floating next to us and a guy with a long beard looked from the ship at us and said: „Now that I see you guys, it comes to my mind that I forgot to take two cyclists on board. How about, join the other animals?“ But Juliane declined with confidence that it will stop raining soon anyway. Oh, it did eventually. The next day when I came back from work.

I took me a little bit more than one hour until I reached Yabitsu Toge, the third T of the day. It was a little bit colder up there and I started to descent without a break. Also for the first time I passed five cars on my way down who were just driving to slow. A big truck didn’t want me to overtake him so I had to play it a little risky.

I arrived at Hadano station, having done 150 km and about 2.000 meters of climbing. There is this huge bento shop at the station with more than 600 cheap bentos on display – but I didn’t felt like eating at all. Anyway, Hadano is the bento capital of the world.

Then I took the train to Noborito and rode home the last few kilometers. I liked one of the labels that TOM attached to one of his posts so much that I added a slightly improved version.
Updated some Toge Bakas at home.

After the epic ascent of Enzan on Saturday, I felt rather restless. There is a race scheduled at the Gunma CSC next weekend and I definitely had not trained enough; I wanted to go into the mountains again before the race. So on Monday afternoon when I looked up the weather forecast for Tuesday and found out what a lovely spring day that would become (most likely) and then checked my schedule and found out in addition that I had no appointments for the day and that all things considered, all things could be postponed to Wednesday anyway, I decided to take a day off.

As my wife started to work this month, I have now to take care of my daughter and prepare her in the morning to withstand the forces of the Japanese education system. Getting her out of the bed is not easy. Getting her into clothes is also not easy. Usually the first question is: „Has Mama picked this shirt? Are you sure?“ Yes I am, if I wouldn’t be sure it would be refused immediately. We then continue in a lighter mood with Yogurt eating competition and making toasts for each other (She : Salami and cucumbers, me : cherry jam). Combing and fixing her hair is a real challenge for me. But I like this moments alone with my daughter and it is good to learn something new and challenging. Sorry, the last paragraph was about my life outside of cycling. Yes, there is one. I shall refrain from blogging about it too often.

So, with my daughter out of the door I was next on the Cervelo + GravityZero wheels plus Assos jacket (but not the Fugu one). I rode in one stretch the first 50 km to Ome station, I could hardly wait to get some more of the Royal White pastry there – simply delicious. I took only a short break and continue to ride to Okutama station, Okutama lake and then over the bridge towards Kosuge and Matsuhime on road 139. It was still „traffic safety week“ and many tents were erected at crossings and many, many policemen and volunteers were sitting in the tents and … well, were basically chit-chatting and drinking tea. But this caused many undesired stops.

At the crossing where david ignored the light and the subsequent shouting of the assembled West Okutama police force, the tent was empty. It can be reasonably assumed that all of them committed suicide to take the blame for not being able to stop a gang of four ignorant foreigners on arguably fast bikes.

The landscape was wonderful and so was the weather. I came home sunburned and to take the Assos jacket with me was a mistake – in the back of my head I still remembered seeing snow on Enzan the previous Saturday. Unfortunately the beautiful landscape is under further threat as many public works construction site were under way. Why – it is only April, the fiscal year has barely started. Should this give us some secret hint; could we use this information as an indicator of increased Japanese government budget deficit for 2008? Shall we sell this information to MorganStanley and the like? Financial analysis and hill climbing were never so close.

I continued to ride to Kosuge where I took the second break of the ride in front of the town hall. Kosuge is a nice village and Tom is right to propose to go there in summer and jump into the Onsen, perhaps even staying the night there. The boys day is coming closer and a long wire with many carp streamers was swaying in the wind over the river.

I then started the attack of Matsuhime, made the 571m ascent in about 52 minutes and added Togebaka No. 8 on the blog. There were almost no cars on the road and the views from the road are spectucular. From a landscape-point-of-view, Yabitsu and Matsuhime are my favourite climbs. I felt pretty OK going up, never it doubt that I would make it in one go.

I went down on the other side – more construction works, mainly slopes and some tunnels. Why should there be tunnels in this part of the country? There is no traffic anyway. There are hardly any people living there. There are plenty of good roads. The only reason I can imagine is, that these are not real tunnels, but that this is in fact a miner and tunnelling engineering primary school and that tunnels are built for education and training purposes.

My legs and lungs felt pretty OK on the descent, but my back starting hurting – I used too much arm muscles on the ascent. So going along route 20 back towards Sagamiko against a string headwind was a drag. Then I entered Uenohara. From my previous posts you might know that I hate Uenohara. There is absolute no reason to built a city in this ridiculous hilly terrain in the first place. All this unnecessary ups and downs leading either to nowhere or to country clubs. But again, perhaps I am wrong and this is not a city, but a city planing school for juvenile delinquents.

Also I crashed in 2007 in Uenohara and was almost killed by a 7-Eleven delivery truck who suddenly started to move in reverse direction on the main road.

This time I crashed again and now I really, really hate Uenohara. When I passed some cars on the left, waiting for the lights to turn green [„blue“ for Japanese readers], I did not saw the level difference between the asphalt surface and the curbstone and there I was falling over to the left. Luckily only my body touched the hard ground, preventing any damage to my beloved new Cervelo bike. Bruises can heal – scratches in the frame are much more costly to cover up. I only had a bloody knee, that was everything. But my GravityZero rear wheel was not running straight any longer and fixing that will be a complicated exercise. The spokes can only be adjusted once the tire, tube and rimtape has been removed. I need to use my Campagnolo wheels again and get used to the slacking.

The good thing however was, that shortly after the crash my metabolism must have released a huge amount of endomorphine or whatever as a result of the shock of falling plus hatred for Uenohara and after the crash I did not feel any pain or any fatigue any longer. I decided that this must be the perfect race strategy : crash first – race later.

So I continued to Sagamiko and then took the train to Jiyugaoka where I paid a visit to Nagai-San. He fixed my bike and I showed him the GravityZero wheels and explained in all glorious details the advantages of the hub, like I did already to almost everyone of you. Like everyone of you he was not very impressed.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day out in the nature and I felt somehow gaining form and loosing weight. If I pass the pass/fail racing criteria in Gunma next weekend I should be happy.