I recently did a 260km (160 mile) bike ride from my home in Kyoto over to the city of Nagoya, and back (view at Strava). It took all day.

この間のサイクリングは京都から名古屋までの往復しました、距離は260キロでした。長い一日でした。

A line of mountains separates the two areas, so I had to go over them each way, but other than that bit of mountain riding, the rest of the ride — the majority of the whole ride — was just slogging through city or suburbia that might have provided interesting diversions if I had the time to stop and enjoy them, but as a “point A to point B” ride, it was mostly boring and uninteresting.

I left home at 5:30am, and spent 2½ hours getting to the other side of Lake Biwa where the climb up to the mountains started.

(I brought only my iPhone with me, so the photos are certainly lacking, sorry.)

The unused behind-the-dam road eventually connected with the main road and snaked up, in my case slowly, toward a very long (2+ mile) tunnel.

Rather than enter the long narrow tunnel, I did what any sane cyclist would do and went over instead. The pleasant road up to the pass over the tunnel had convenient markers every 200m giving the length to the prefectural line, which in this case was also the high point of the mountain pass.

The tunnel-bypass road started up steeply at first, but then seemed to level out for most of the way. I enjoyed the flat respite with some trepidation, as I kept wondering when the climb would come, and how steep it would be when it did. But it never did. It was errie. The segment has over 200m of elevation gain, but I didn't seem to notice most of it. I'd like to think it's just because I'm strong, but who knows.

The road on the Mie Prefecture side of the pass was horrible for a while, and the descent took longer than it would have taken to ascend. But eventually it connected with the main road where the tunnel ends, and that descent was heavenly. Even riding safely and conservatively as I do, I reached 82kph (51mph), a new record for me. I like my descents.

One benefit of letting the computer create your route is that it can make use of minor roads more effectively than manual routing. For a while I was snaking through little streets like the one seen above.

Soon, though, I entered the Nagoya floodplane. For more than the next hour, I was riding toward downtown at essentially sea level.

What must have been one huge 40km-wide river eons ago is now fertile ground punctuated by many rivers.

The occasional river crossing was pretty, but for many kilometers it was just boring flat suburbia morphing into boring flat urban drudgery. But 6¼ hours and 127km (79 miles) after setting out, I arrived at Nagoya Station.

I didn't stay long; I sent a “hi there!” note to my brother in law who lives in Nagoya, and headed back toward Kyoto.

This whole trip was a challenge that I'd set for myself, and I wasn't sure that I could do it. I chose a route that gave me an out if I wanted it.... if I decided to take the train home from Nagoya, I'd still have an impressive (for me) ride logged for the day. I prepared two separate routes, and took the easier one for the “to” direction. If I decided to make the return trip by bike, I could retrace my steps on the easier of the two, or take on the additional challenge of the harder route.

I felt pretty good, so I chose the harder route for the return. At least it was harder on paper (quite a bit more climbing), but mentally it was easier because I didn't really know what to expect. If I had retraced my steps, I'd know exactly what was waiting and that somehow made it worse.

Anyway, like before, the hour or so in Nagoya's flood plane was not fun.

Somewhere along the line I had decided that “Cycling to Nagoya for Coffee” would make an understatedly cool title for the trip, so I thought I had better actually stop for coffee. I didn't want to take the time for a real sit-down cafe, so I just stopped by a convenience store to stock up on food, and grabbed a pre-packaged Starbucks coffee just for the photo op.

I was feeling good but worried about the time. I thought I'd be able to return home by 5:30pm, making it a 12-hour round trip, but that was proving to be an optimistic view of my abilities. I had to be home for something at 7pm, and that deadline was looking iffy, so I tried to reduce how much I stopped.

The route from the city toward the mountains undulated much more than the route I took into the city, so I was never sure when the “real” climb up the mountains would start, but when I saw the steepness of this road, I knew something major was starting...

The top item on the signs points the way to the “Suzuka Skyline”, a road that goes up and over the mountains. The fact that the road has a name like this tells me both that it's likely to be well maintained, and that it'll be steep.

The road leading away in that photo is not actually part of the Suzuka Skyline. I didn't really know what to expect, but this lead-in introduction had me bracing for the worst. I suppose one can't sense from the photo, but that road is steep... this lead-up to the Suzuka Skyline, I realize now, is more than 2km averaging almost 9%, with a maximum grade of 15%.

I hadn't researched the road grades, but I did research where I could fill up on drinks, so I stopped by the last vending machine until far on the other side of the mountain. They apparently knew that they were the last, as they price gouged by 50%:

The Suzuka Skyline itself is almost 6km at an average of 8.5%. It's pretty consistent... it just keeps going up and up and up. As I expected, the road surface was excellent.

I took it slow and easy, leaving myself enough energy for the 100km that remained after it.

The construction in the foreground is at a resort that lies on a road that eventually joins up with the road I was on. That it was so far below me, yet would join up with me, told me that it was really steep, and indeed that's what I found out later. That road is almost 2km long with an average of 11%, but it's much steeper in some areas.

I'll have to try it next time I'm in the area, though I can't imagine when that might ever be.

The descent down the other side was lovely, but offered no views, and had quite of bit of undulation. I suspect it would be the easier of the two climbs.

I could have taken a more scenic route home, but at this point “fast” was more important. Fumie had already taken over what I needed to be back by 7pm for, so I didn't have to worry about jumping on a train to make it in time. But I still just wanted to be home, so I put on the gas and rode with traffic (often faster than traffic in the evening rush hour).

I was happy to make a PR by a wide margin on the little climb on Route 1 that separates Otsu from Kyoto. Just as I did on my previously-longest ride, I was happy to PR some segments at the end, to punctuate the long distance with some speed.

In the end I made it home at 7:05pm, 13½ hours after I departed.

I would strongly recommend this round trip to Nagoya for anyone really wanting to say “I've done a round trip to Nagoya”, but otherwise it has little to recommend it. Parts here and there were wonderful, but would be better visited on rides with better filling in between. I don't think I'll do this ride again.

(About the same distance the other way is Himeji, and the routes to and fro look much more pleasant, so I guess that's on my list next. Himeji Cappuccino awaits!)