On Wednesday I did what must have been the roughest ride of my short cycling life, a ride that left me absolutely exhausted to the bone before I was even a third done with it. In the end I rode the entire big loop I'd planned, 175km (110mi) to Kobe City's Mt. Rokko and back, but it took 12 hours and a lot more willpower than I thought I had.

It was almost a spur of the moment, and I didn't think it'd be all that difficult for me, and I left the house in good spirits.

The first climb of the day is the nasty Osaka East segment mentioned in my blog post about better Strava segments. Overall it's only 8% for 4km, but it has some very steep sections.

It's always beautiful.

I wasn't particularly trying, but it turns out that on a 23-minute effort I missed my PR by 15 seconds. Had I known I was so close I might have tried, but at the same time, I knew I had a long day, so I was trying to be efficient more than fast.

It was a bit chilly (5℃), made worse by the strong headwind that appears once I got over the pass. I was glad that light spring/fall gloves aside, I was still in full winter kit.

Not long after this gate begins a long, lovely descent that I'd never taken (though I'd climbed it the other direction twice before, including this ride). It was long and sweeping and fast, so I would have loved to have fun with it, but with the wind I felt like I was trying to swim upstream, so I just let gravity do its thing and hoped it was enough to overcome the wind.

By this time I was just following the route on my Garmin cycling computer, so I had little idea where I actually was, but for the most part it was deserted mountain roads...

I ended up chatting with the guy seen in walking in the background. He excitedly told me that more and more cyclists were coming by this area, in groups. He seemed to like the idea, and was amazed by it (as the road is quite steep).

Most of the route was new roads for me, so other than what was around Kyoto, and the main destination of the climb (Mt. Rokko), I didn't have any sense for what awaited me, so I never knew what was around the next curve. In this case, it was a steep descent, which is always nice.

Taking the new road, I was rewarded with a long 12% climb that was most brutal in its layout: it was long and mostly straight, so you could see the long rising road waiting for you. For me, this is much more difficult than the same climb on a twisty road, since I can't see (and be daunted) by what lies ahead.

In the end, though, I got a nice (but still super hazy) view.

Again, I didn't know this road so didn't know what might be coming next, but I assumed there would be some sort of descent eventually, and I was not disappointed. The descent from turned out to be a lovely 6km at 6%. And again, I tickled myself by just taking it easy yet still registering a top-10 time (in this case out of 446 people who have done it a combined 1,400 times).

And that's where, a third of the way into the trip, the day effectively ended for me.

That long lovely descent ended in a big city, near the Osaka Itami Airport, and the moment I got into city traffic, a profound weariness hit me like the most crushing of post-Thanksgiving-dinner food comas. It was amazing in its abruptness, as if a switch had been turned off. At first I thought it might have been because I used so much energy concentrating during the descent, but even after resting for 10 minutes and eating again, I didn't feel any better.

I didn't think it was the dreaded bonk (cycling version of “hitting the wall”) because I had eaten before leaving, and on a regular schedule along the way. I didn't know what it was, but hoped I could shake it off during the 10km of city riding I had to get through to reach the start of the main climb of the day, Rokko East, whose 880m (2,888') of vertical gain averages out at 8% over its 11.6km (7.2mi).

I had hoped that the easy city riding would let me shake off the deep fatigue I felt, but it didn't. I was so tired, that closing my eyes for a second brought the most wonderful feeling of complete comfort, to be followed at the end of the second by the dread of not being able to keep them closed.

A minute or so in, I gave in and stopped, parked the bike, lay down, and closed my eyes for 45 minutes.

It felt wonderful to lie down, close my eyes, and just quietly listen to the passing sounds, but in the end it didn't do anything to help, so after 45 minutes I collected myself and trudged upward on the unrelenting climb.

When thinking of the big climb up Mt. Rokko, I'd had in mind how easy it was the only other time I'd done it, but it had dawned on me during the 10km across the city that my previous climb was over a 25km route, and that this time I'd be doing the same elevation over less than half the distance (and thus the slope was twice as steep). Ugh, what a stupid mental mistake. But anyway, I was here now and I just had to get through it.

The only other people I saw going up, besides the occasional car, was one hiker and some kids (junior high or high school) on heavy mamachari city bikes. Well, they weren't “on” them, since they were pushing slowly uphill. I let them know how much farther it was (4.2km), which shocked them, but they kept on.

There are absolutely no services of any kind during this long climb, except at the main road's pass there's a restaurant and some vending machines, but you're not quite at the top yet, because from there there's a short intense climb (300m @ 15%) to the top...

I guess a lot of cyclists don't know about the last little bit to the top, or choose not to take it. It's really daunting if you're not used to steep stuff, especially after having killed yourself for an hour to get here. I'd been wanting to make a Kyoto-Rokko round trip for a long time, and was inspired to actually do it now by an acquaintance's ride a few days prior. He's much stronger than me (his time up to the restaurant was an hour faster than mine), but for whatever reason he didn't make the final push to the top.

In fact, of all the friends and acquaintances I follow on Strava, only one has ever made the full eastern climb I was doing, and even then, the two other folks he was riding with opted to skip that last steep climb.

I didn't skip it, and was surprised that my two-minute effort was only 12 seconds slower than my PR.

The mask, by the way, is to warm the air as I breath. My tonsils are apparently very “sensitive” to cold, and even a short spell of exertion without the mask would give me flu symptoms for the next couple of days. A combination of some allergy medicine and this cheap ($7) mask makes it possible for me to cycle in the winter.

I didn't stick around. Being inactive at the top meant that I was starting to get chilly, and knew I'd freeze on the long descent so for the first time in months I put on a windbreaker as an extra layer. The long descent should have been thrilling, but I just plodded along.

The second half, the gorgeous Ura Rokko descent, should have been the highlight of my day, but my fingers were so cold I could barely feel the brake levers, which is not any more conducive to a safe descent than my fatigue.

I wasn't hungry, but thought that a real meal might help. Unfortunately, I didn't come across a restaurant in a timely fashion, so I made do with a convenience store and had a cup of coffee, some bread, and a natto rice wrap.

This was followed by some more steep climbs, but nothing as long as Mt. Rokko.

At the top of one climb I came across this forlorn sight. “Wanda” is verbal play meaning more or less “the woof”, so it seems it was some kind of doggie amusement park. Indeed, I found this urban-explorer report on the place.

Eventually came the next big descent, which turned out to be one of my favorites, the Arima Highway (5km @ -6%). It was long and mostly straight, which means one can really get up a head of steam. I spent most of the time stuck behind a truck spewing dark blue fumes, and then when he kindly let me by I quickly got blocked by an elderly driver in a tiny tin box, but it's just as well. The light meal at the convenience store had perked me up much more than any of the other food I'd been eating, but I still wasn't fit for a mentally-challenging descent.

I had to make my way through some urban areas for a while...

After a long while of climbing and descending, I started to feel lethargic again, which told me that it was indeed the light meal at the convenience store that had perked me up. I have no idea why the yokan and calorie cookies I normally use weren't doing it for me this time, but I finally decided to find a real restaurant. I came across towns and villages, but it took a while to find an appropriate restaurant where I could park the bike safely, but at the 120km (75mi) point in the ride, I did, and I ate.

More ups and downs ensued; I eventually started to feel much better.

The wind, which had been brutal in the morning but then had subsided for me on the other side of Mt. Rokko, had picked up again for hours around the restaurant stop, but mercifully turned into a lovely tailwind toward the end of the ride in Kameoka. That, combined with the energy from the meal, and I was felt good for the first time since the first climb.

I actually didn't feel so bad by the time I got home; I just wish I could have said the same for the bulk of the ride. The ride savaged me, and I'm still not sure why. I want to do it again, but with energy next time, so I'll bring a bike lock so I can stop more easily to eat.

Overall at 176km (109mi) it was my 8th-longest ride ever, and with 3,491m (11,453') of vertical climb it ranked fourth toughest of my rides so far. But on the “painful grind” scale, I think it ranks #1.

Here's the Relive.cc video of the ride.